A Whidbey animal shelter benefited from the community’s generosity this weekend.

Hillcrest Elementary School teacher Rebecca Ching, students in her second grade class and several of her colleagues donated over $1,000 worth of pet food and other supplies to the Whidbey Animals’ Improvement Foundation, known as WAIF, in Coupeville on Saturday.

Donations were collected in honor of Grace Horn, tragically killed in a car crash this time last year.

“This is just a little something we could do to help in our community and share the love,” she said.

Every year, Ching organizes a donation event with her students to teach them that change in the community can begin even in the classroom, and even with kids.

When the anniversary of Grace Horn’s death arrived earlier this month, Ching felt compelled to honor her memory, particularly because of her connections with the Horn family. Grace Horn’s father worked for Ching’s husband at Hard Stuff Concrete and her brother attended Hillcrest, where her mother also volunteered.

Ching suggested the idea of gathering pet supplies to her students, and they were on board.

“I was like, ‘What do you guys think about doing this in honor of Grace, because she loved animals just as much as you do?” she recalled.

Ching and her students began collecting donations right after Thanksgiving with the goal to fill two cars’ worth and they did just that.

Grace Horn’s parents and several Hillcrest students joined Ching when she dropped off the donations on Saturday, what ended up being a healing and emotional affair.

“I don’t even know how to put it in words,” she said. “It was humbling, to be honest, having her mom there cause we all were in tears by the end.”