After Lisa Reese’s 16-year-old son Andy was killed in a car accident in 2010, she was determined to continue his legacy of caring for the less fortunate. So she started Andy’s Attic, a nonprofit that provides clothes and shoes to low-income teenagers. The organization took off, and soon moved from Reese’s home to a warehouse, and finally to its current location at South High Community School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where 77 percent of the students are low-income.
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Students at the school volunteer to sort clothes and fulfill donation requests. Andy’s Attic provided 180 bags of items last year, including clothes that students’ parents could wear to job interviews, and dorm furnishings for needy students heading off to college. As volunteer Vincor Vasquez told the Telegram Gazette, “Andy helped me out. I came to help him.”