COOPER GIVES BACK TO COMMUNITY
(re-printed with authorized consent of the Kamloops Daily News)
Shantelle Cooper's voice
sounded like 10 miles of bad road.
It was Friday evening and she was in her bed, trying to
bury as deep into the covers as she could, anything to try and get as far away
as humanly possible from this miserable weather and the illness she could feel
coming on. Later, she would refer to it as a "minor case of strep throat," as
though strep throat is just a small inconvenience.
But even at that there was a smile in her voice. The
dawn, it seems, couldn't come soon enough.
Cooper knows that her feeling ill was nothing compared to
the day-to-day battles faced by many people.
And, on this particular night, Cooper knew that when she
crawled out of her warm and cozy bed in the morning, when she walked out the
door into the cold and the wind, she was going to meet a mother and her two
daughters for the first time and she was going to make their day.
That made Cooper's heart sing. Strep throat? What strep
throat?
Through Shannon Ritchie, one of the mentoring
co-ordinators at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Kamloops, Cooper and her little
sister of 2* years, 13-year-old Sierra, adopted this family for Christmas.
It isn't something Cooper had to do, or something she was
forced to do. It's something she felt needed doing and it's something she wanted
to do. She came into our community from Nanaimo and attended our university. Her
family is here now. She now calls our city her home. She is one of us and this
is her way of giving back.
The 5-foot-9 Cooper has played five seasons with the TRU
WolfPack women's soccer team. How good is she? A midfielder, she is the reigning
B.C. Colleges Athletic Association player of the year and a three-time
conference all-star. She also has been nominated as B.C. Sport's female college
athlete of the year.
A sociology major in her fifth year at TRU, Cooper, 23,
knows what she wants to do with her life; she just hasn't decided the order in
which to do it. She knows she is going to apply to the RCMP; she doesn't know
whether she first will do some traveling.
In other words, Shantelle
Cooper is one of those golden girls, one of those young women you would love for
your daughter, niece or granddaughter to emulate. She is one of those young
women who is like that and wears it oh, so well.
The beneficiary of a middle-class upbringing, you know
that, like most of us, she never really lacked for anything. Which means being a
Big Sister and adopting a family are things she doesn't have to do. But she
wants to. Something drives her to do these things.
In this instance, she wanted to do it with Sierra, at
least in part because Sierra "really, really" wanted to be involved in it.
So they touched base with Ritchie and away they went . .
.
Larry Read, TRU's sports information officer, wrote a
letter on their behalf and they visited various local businesses.
Cooper mentions Nature's Fare and Nutters Bulk and
Natural Foods, Runners' Sole and Wrapper Jacks, Costco and Popeyes as among the
businesses that were quick to provide donations.
"We had quite a bit of community support to help us,"
Cooper says. "It looks pretty good."
All that was required was a turkey and enough fixings to
provide the family with one basic meal. But you don't have to read further to
know that Cooper wasn't going to stop at that.
She went out and got some eggs, cheese, milk "and stuff."
In the end, Shantelle and
Sierra went "over the top." And, of course, the hamper included presents. Cooper
wouldn't have it any other way.
She also discovered that being involved with Sierra in
this project brought the two of them "a lot closer together."
Before approaching a business and asking for help, the
two of them would discuss their approach and then Sierra would make the pitch,
including handing over the letter that Read had done up.
"We've always been very close . . . well, you're not
close at first," Cooper says. "But we have become very close."
You know, Cooper didn't have to run around and, as she
puts it, "get myself sick doing this." It's something she wanted to do, her way
of thanking our community for all it has meant to her.
She got something of a payback Saturday when she and her
boyfriend, James Byra, who plays on the TRU men's soccer team, did the
delivering.
"Oh, it went so well," Cooper says. "She was really happy
. . . really happy. She said she has never had a bigger hamper. The kids were
both really happy and they were, already, 'I get this, I get this.'
"It was a really good feeling. She gave me a hug. It was
really nice."
And in the midst of a conversation, it almost sounded as
though Cooper was getting a little emotional, like maybe there was a tear in an
eye or a lump in her throat.
But, nah, it must have been the cold that was running
around in her head like a runaway locomotive.
After all, the BCCAA's female soccer player of the year
wouldn't have a soft spot that big.
Or would she?
Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is
at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca.
© 2008 The Daily News (Kamloops)