At 8, helping others
is her No. 1` priority
Olivia Aird asks nothing for herself, only that those in need get assistance
Olivia Aird knows she has it all. The 8-year-old sits on her mother’s lap in the living room of her Crownsville home, surrounded by her family. The Christmas tree is up and the room is full of gifts.
She doesn’t want them.
For her birthday last year, Olivia told her parents she wants to help families in need instead of getting presents. So the Airds collected donations at her birthday party for Sarah’s House, a shelter for the homeless and victims of domestic violence at Fort George G. Meade.
This year, she wanted to do it again but things went much differently.
Olivia’s father, Mike Aird, found a note in her room last month:
“Dear God, if you live up here please read this,” she wrote. “I am very upset because people live in orphanages or on the sidewalk and I want you to help them find a house and tell Jesus thank-you for dying on the cross for all of us.”
When her father asked her about the note, Olivia said she wanted to send it up to heaven so God could read it.
Mike Aird posted the note on Facebook, letting his friends know that Olivia was looking for donations for her birthday. Then the packages started rolling in.
People started coming up to Mike at business and networking events he was at for work, handing him bags of donations. Boxes started showing up on the Airds’ doorstep every day with new donations in the name: Olivia’s Birthday.
“People just came out of the woodwork,” said Lori Aird, Olivia’s mother. “We just thought it would be fun for extra gifts to show up, but it grew out of control.”
In the last two-and-a-half weeks, a mountain of diapers, baby wipes, toiletries, towels, sheets, washcloths, school supplies, kitchen supplies, food and feminine hygiene products, along with more than $600 in cash and gift cards piled up in the Airds living room.
Olivia did all of this, but she wouldn’t tell you that. In the presence of a reporter and a photographer, she shrinks away. She turns her head into her mother’s body or focuses on twirling her mother’s hair in her fingers. She answers all questions with a shrug.
“Her heart is just to love people, but she doesn’t like to talk about it,” Lori Aird said.
After celebrating Olivia’s birthday last weekend, the Airds had to stop taking donations so they could pack up the items they already have for Sarah’s House. Olivia, her parents and her 10-year-old sister, Gracie, were joined by her grandparents, Don and Kendra, and Kendra’s son Mason.
Olivia is shy until it’s time to start loading up the donations.
“There’s a box in your room, Daddy,” she shouted, running out of her mother’s lap and up the stairs. She loads her arms up with boxes of crayons and toothpaste until they’re so full she can’t move. In the end, they fill up the bed of a pickup truck and the inside of a minivan.
In the middle of loading up in their driveway, Mike told Olivia she should send the balloon with her message to God up before the sun goes down. Olivia ran to grab the cube-shaped balloon with snowmen on it just as her mother secured the note to its string.
She didn’t wait to give it a second read or say any last words. She let the string go, and watched her note go up with the smallest hint of a smile, then a crack of a half smile.
Before it’s out of sight, she ran back in the house to grab more donations.
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