Episode 03
The Librarian Who Pays for Strangers' Copies.
Anna Moreno has worked the reference desk at the Royce Branch in Grass Valley — a 1916 Carnegie library on Mill Street — for twenty-two years. She quietly covers the cost every time someone can't afford their copies. We talk about why she started, what keeps her going, and what she would tell the woman she was in 2003.
Anna has been at the reference desk at the Royce Branch longer than some of her colleagues have been alive. She wears a blue cardigan most days. She knows the regulars by name. She runs the early-literacy program and the job-application workshop.
And for twenty-two years, every time a patron at the copy machine pulls out their wallet and can't cover the forty cents or the dollar-sixty or the six bucks, Anna quietly pays from her own pocket. She never asks to be thanked. She never tracks the total. She does not call it charity.
I wanted to talk to her for the Good People Exist series on Living Good Karma because she's one of the ones who made me believe the title. We recorded this in the Royce Branch on a Wednesday, after hours. You can hear the old building.
Her question to you is at the bottom of the page.
This Episode's Question Accepting answers
“When's the last time a stranger was kind to you in a way that surprised you? What did they do?”
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