Dec 26, 2014 3 min read

Mitzi Miller, as a court-appointed special advocate, saw children in dependency and neglect cases coming to the Washington County Courthouse wearing shoes with squashed heelcaps because that was the only way they could fit into pairs they had outgrown. Girls were wearing boys’ clothes and vice versa. Children had no warm clothing in winter, or were clad in sweaters in summer, and not because they were warding off courtroom air-conditioning.

The kids, Miller learned, were wearing the only clothing they owned.

She decided to do something about this, taking a clothing drive and putting it into overdrive.

“I’m the town beggar,” Miller said. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

She filled 88 bags of clothing that she tabulated, and many more that she didn’t.

In the eight years that she’s been on a mission to clothe the naked and shoe the barefoot or barely shod, the word is getting around.

“I find socks and underwear hanging on my front door,” Miller, of Bentleyville, told the Washington County commissioners Thursday as they recognized her for her volunteer work. Schools donate to her their unclaimed lost-and-found articles of clothing. Congregations collect on her behalf. Miller gets the word out through social networking.

“This is something that comes from the heart,” said Commissioner Harlan Shober.

She acknowledged her storage space is filled, but that could change. In a week and a half, she handed out 38 coats.

“There are many behind Mitzi,” she told Commissioners Larry Maggi, Diana Irey Vaughan and Shober.

In her home that is served by a well, she launders donated clothing, rejecting anything torn or stained. She yearns for donations of all sizes of children’s new shoes.

“They have worn ill-fitting shoes for so long. They deserve a new pair of shoes and underwear and socks,” she said. “No child in this county deserves to go through what they’ve been through,” she said of the children coming through the Children and Youth Services agency. “But they need the human dignity of being dressed. I wish I could say child abuse would stop.”

Miller is not a 501c3, the designation the Internal Revenue Service gives to non-profit organizations. Because of that, she said big-box stores can’t donate clothing to her drives, and she said she can’t afford to shop at thrift stores.

“Everything I collect is given away free,” Miller said. “I don’t charge the county mileage” when making trips from Bentleyville to Washington to drop off clothing at the Courthouse Square office building. She did appeal, though, to the commissioners for permission to enter the parking garage gratis as part of her missions of mercy.

She answers her phone, 724-239-5387, at all hours and had fliers made to publicize her need to clothe newborns to teenagers.

“Caseworkers will call her in the middle of the night,” said Michelle Lober, who supervises the CYS foster care program. She pointed to Miller as an example of what one person can do to make a difference in the lives of many.

Kimberly Rogers, administrator of CYS, confirmed Miller has clothed hundreds of CYS youngsters, but Miller said she doesn’t help only children overseen by the agency.

“It has nothing to do with CASA. This is me, Mitzi. I just don’t do foster kids. The people don’t have to fill out an application. Everything I collect is given away free. I want to be my own entity.”