LIMA — After reading about Crossroads Crisis Center having nearly $10,000 stolen by former executive director Emily Wrencher, a Columbus couple has chosen to donate that amount back to the center.
“My mom lives in Spencerville, so we were home one weekend and my husband is a huge newspaper reader,” said Sabrina Daley-Baker of her husband, Phil. “He reads newspapers from everywhere we go, and he happened to see what happened to the crisis center. We’ve been super blessed this year with money we’ve come into this year and he said, ‘You know, I want to do something nice for somebody. I’m going to donate $10,000 to Crossroads because they really need it.’”
Daley-Baker still isn’t quite sure why her husband chose to make the donation after reading the article but said it hit home for her, having been in a previous relationship involving domestic violence.
“Had anybody told me seven years ago I would be able to present a check like this to someone, I would have said, ‘No, never in a million years.’” Daley-Baker said. “This past year has been an incredibly good year for us and now we’re able to share that.”
They’ve also helped out people in their neighborhood, sometimes leaving envelopes in their mailboxes if they know they’ve fallen on hard times.
The Bakers reached out to current executive director Christel Keller to make the donation, who said she was overwhelmed with emotion when she received that call because it’s one of the largest donation sums they’ve received to date.
“I was kind of in shock so I didn’t tell anybody. Some things are just too good to be true,” Keller recalled of the call. “I really think that it’s taken a lot of time for the community to realize that it was not our agency, it was one person and one person alone (that took the money from the center). This gives us hope that we’ve gotten that message through that we’re here to provide life-saving services to survivors.”
Crossroads provides services to domestic violence survivors, which can include emergency confidential shelter, court advocacy, counseling and other necessities needed when leaving a situation like clothing, household items and food.
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