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Ann Ditty keeps the list in her purse. And every Wednesday, she and her mentee, Veronica Holmes-Lentz, a fifth-grader at Gordon Parks Elementary school, decide on what they’ll do next.
They’ve missed only two dates since they were paired together last September through Care4Kids, an Operation Breakthrough mentor program.
“I like that I get to get away from my sisters and go out and have fun instead of being in the house all day being bored,” says Veronica, 11. “It’s more than just having fun. You get to learn stuff from your mentor, and your mentor can learn stuff from you. Because not only do I have a chance to get to know her, every time we get together we are able to connect and talk to each other.”
On occasion, Ann takes Veronica out on other days, too. I met them on a Sunday at the Plaza library after I spoke there. Veronica told me she liked writing and shared my love for Hello Kitty.
So on her 11th birthday, which fell on Wednesday last week, Ann told Veronica they could do anything on the list. She chose lunch at Subway, ice cream and cake — and a visit to The Kansas City Star. Afterward, they planned to go to Target to pick up Ann’s gift to Veronica, a piece of Hello Kitty luggage.
“Hello Kitty is nice and she wears my favorite color, which is pink, and she has her own sense of humor,” Veronica says. “And she’s a cat. You see a cat in a different way. Not a bad cat that scratches the furniture.”
Ann says she was at first scared to be a mentor, but now she looks forward to Wednesdays just as much as Veronica does.
“I was worried she wouldn’t like me, because I’m old, but it’s a lot like being a grandma,” says Ann, 54, a retired Kansas City social worker. “We just enjoy each other the way we are. I’m so busy, that I look forward to having time with Veronica. How often do you get to shut out everything and just spend time with someone you care about?”
Now Ann has become so passionate about mentoring, that she helps recruit people to the program. She has found that, like herself, most people’s biggest fear is that they won’t be good at it or the kids won’t like them.
But she and Veronica say anyone who’s interested should give mentoring a shot.
“If they are caring,” Veronica says, “they should try it and not be worried about being scared or if the kid doesn’t like them … instead of assuming, because you’ll never know.”
Another thing she wants mentors to know is not to judge their mentee at first glance.
“It shouldn’t matter what the kid looks like or how they dress or their personality, because they are all special in their own way.”
Through spending time with Ann, Veronica says she has learned to think more about the future and decided she might one day want to be a teacher, writer, artist or even an acrobat.
“I think anytime I’m with Miss Ann, she teaches me about goals, and I can reach my goals and become very successful in the future.”
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