The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Five Star Trucking employees give back to Edison Elementary family
Christmas came early for a family in the Willoughby-Eastlake School District as well as a local food pantry, thanks to a woman and her co-workers.
Lee Rozar, who works as safety & compliance manager at Five Star Trucking in Willoughby, brought two cars full of wrapped Christmas gifts and bags of groceries to Edison Elementary School on Dec. 14.
Rozar had reached out to Diana Zaverl, a family-liaison for Willoughby-Eastlake Schools, wanting to donate. Appropriately, the day they spoke was Nov. 17, World Kindness Day.
According to Rozar, she had been buying doughnuts for the drivers at Five Star when she heard on the radio that it was World Kindness Day. After speaking with Zaverl, she approached her boss with the idea for the donations.
“I had also expressed to her (Rozar) that in my years of doing this kind of work, one of my desires is to do more for — as I call them — ‘grandparent families’,” Zaverl said. She went on to explain that it refers to those situations where grandparents are raising their grandchildren, often as a result of drug use by parents.
As a result of talking to Zaverl, Rozar was able to reach out to her co-workers to gather donated Christmas gifts for a “grandparent family.” The employees agreed to spend their money on food for the pantry and Christmas gifts for a single grandmother and her grandchildren.
Rozar — along with her co-worker Lauren Longano, the assistant operations manager, and her boss, Chief Financial Officer Joe Gramc — brought about $600 to $700 worth of gifts to Edison for the family.
The three Five Star employees expressed a desire to pay it forward.
“Make this more of a regular thing than a one-off thing,” Gramc said. “Where maybe each school does a toy drive and a food drive for families...”
Rozar also mentioned that the giving back shouldn’t stop at her or at Five Star.
“I would like to challenge the rest of the companies in Willoughby to do something like this,” she said, “see what they can do.”