Local Students Craft Toys for Disabled Children

It’s Friday night, and Victoria Heisler is stitching a stuffed monkey in the middle of a hallway at Old Mill High School.

“I’ve been working on this one for about three hours,” she says, as she carefully stitches and sews through the plaything’s shoulder.

While most students at Old Mill are , Victoria and more than a dozen of her peers are stuffing sock monkeys.

Comprised of cotton, cloth and some handy sewing, Victoria and students from Old Mill’s National Arts Honor Society are creating the classic craft for children with brain disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore.

The effort is all part of a tradition of service at the school’s art department.

“Every year, we focus on three levels of service: local, state and global,” said . “The sock monkeys are part of the ‘state’ service project.”

Although these students are involved in service every year, this is the first time the Kennedy Krieger Institute will benefit from the students’ hard work.

Victoria says she suggested the idea because her mother works at the institute that works with children ranging in age from 5 to 13.

The 17-year-old senior says she if she wasn’t making her sock monkey, she’d probably be at the institute with her mother, helping children.

“I just love helping people,” she says.

Alongside her friend Nicole Heil, the two friends joke and laugh while another peer of theirs blasts music from a miniature boom box.

Even first-year Principal Jim Todd is in on the action, making sock monkeys with his wife and two sons.

“I love supporting student activities and I want to support them all. That includes all the extracurriculars,” Todd says.

Victoria says she plans to help deliver the sock monkeys with her mother once all the playthings are complete.