Hat lady has made it her mission to help keep people warm

Saturday, Jan. 22, 2000 | 9:44 a.m.

She's called the hat lady.

For 12 years, Pat Robinson has driven her red Ford Mustang to local shelters, unloaded plastic bags stuffed with hats, scarves and gloves and handed them to the poor and the homeless.

Nearly 35,000 items are delivered each year, including afghans for the seniors and 35-piece layette sets given to new mothers.

Some may call her a saint. Yet she refuses the title. "I'm just somebody who gets mad easy," said the outspoken Robinson, who has been serving the community since she moved here in 1981.

United Methodist Social Ministries sponsors the program, but the hats and scarves are mainly knitted and crocheted by elderly residents in the valley.

"One heart is for the giving and one heart is for the receiving," she says as she points to the logo on the business card. "It's a two-way mission."

As the sun set Wednesday and the lights of the downtown casinos flickered against a graying sky, the 66-year-old made her first rounds of the season. It was 69 degrees, an unusually warm evening for January, and Robinson was a little late this year.

"They usually expect me on Thanksgiving," she said as she pulled the knitted and colorful hats out of the bags and set them on the folding tables outside the Rescue Mission's dining hall. "This is the first time I haven't been here on Thanksgiving."

Her troops usually hit the streets beginning on Thanksgiving and going out again in December, January, February -- and March if it's cold.

This past year, however, she lost her husband, Gary, to cancer. This is her first year making the rounds without him. And because of back problems, this may be her last year in charge. "Someone else will have to take over," Robinson said, as she watched the volunteers unloading the bags from her car.

Robinson began the program in the winter of 1988. She was serving Christmas dinner at St. Vincent's shelter when she handed a plate to a homeless man and felt his very cold hands.

"His hands were like ice," she said. "I never knew anybody could be that cold. He had been in the building 45 minutes and his hands were still ice cold. It made me mad."

Robinson didn't know how to knit or crochet, but because she had been delivering birthday treats to residents living in senior housing, she knew where she might be able to find help. So she tacked up recipe cards to bulletin boards in the area asking "Can you knit or crochet?"

People came forward. Others donated yarn and it just sort of grew, she said. "People seemed to like what we were doing."

That year she bought 500 pair of cotton work gloves at cost from a man at a local store and asked if she could come back the next year. "He had no idea what he was in for," she said.

She now buys 2,880 pairs of gloves from a man she calls "the glove man" and an equal amount of socks from Wal-Mart. "You should see my living room. All I have is a path this wide," she said as she spreads her arms about 2 feet. People from all areas of the valley contribute to the program.

There are only two rules to the program, she said. "Nobody gets paid. Nobody sells."

But they work.

Patients staying at Pedregal House, a local hospice that serves physically disabled people, put rubber bands around the socks and gloves to keep the pairs together.

Charlie Wickham, who has been making hats for seven or eight years, uses a plastic loom to create hats with a little extra padding.

"They're called Charlie Hats," after their creator, Robinson said. "The ones who sleep on the street really like them. They use them as pillows. Charlie gets little tennis balls of yarn -- turns them into pillows."

About 15 people in the community make quilts. A blind woman makes the baby blankets. Volunteers give her separate bags of white and colored yarn, so she doesn't have to see the colors to make designs. A local woman, Nan Borchard, also known as the "baby lady," puts together the layettes.

"We've lost a lot of our crocheters and knitters," Robinson said. "We're down to less than 100." Many of the knitters are seniors who are getting too old to knit.

They too have put in their share. "They work very, very hard and they never even see the people who get this stuff," she said. "The honors go to the people who do the work."

Robinson said doesn't yet know who will take on the project later this year. But with all the yarn and all of the knitters she knows, she is confident the project will somehow continue.

As the shelter began to serve dinner Wednesday, the line out back moved forward. The men were let through the gate in groups of 10.

They passed by the tables and slowed down to pick up their items. They didn't ask where they came from. Some picked through the assortment looking for specific colors, others just grabbed whatever was closest to them and kept walking.

One grabbed socks and gloves. "I really need this," he said. Another man shouted "Thank you, ladies" to the women handing them out behind the tables.

"It's more than what you're giving to them," Tom Toledo, house manager for the shelter, said. "It's the feeling that somebody cares. Many of these people have been on the streets for years.

"I have been here six years with the mission and she's been here every year," he said.

Since her program began, Robinson said nearly 400,000 items have been distributed, including the 400 layette sets that are delivered each year to homeless and low-income families. Safe Nest, Reach Out and Salvation Army also receive items.

"If somebody needs the stuff, we go," Robinson said. "If I can't find them, they find me."

Robinson said her husband was a hat lady too. "That's what the street people started calling us years ago. Whether you're a man or a woman, you're known as the hat lady.

"Most people don't even know I have a name," she added.

But they all knew she had a red Mustang, which was traded in this year for a station wagon, loaded down with hats.

"Nobody could miss that car," she said. "Fire engine red. People in the food lines would see us pull up and say 'Oh! The hat lady's here.' They'd get out of line and start carrying the bags inside, because they knew they were going to get hats.

"Wait for a cold day. Drive down between Bonanza and Owens, and Main Street and Las Vegas Boulevard. You'll see a lot of rainbow-colored hats."

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