Jeanne started her Connecticut Binky Patrol chapter in 2012, one town over from Newtown. Sandy Hook had just happened. She and a group of friends — knitters, crocheters, a teacher, a mom, people who wanted to do something — put out a call on Facebook for green and white scarves.

It went viral. Within days, packages were arriving from across the country and around the world. They distributed 3,000 scarves to everyone in Newtown who needed one — children, staff, families.

When it was over, the group kept asking: what’s next?

Jeanne wanted something permanent. Kids need help everywhere, she said — not just when something bad happens. She found Binky Patrol. Twelve years and nearly 30,000 handmade blankets later, she and her colleague Barbara sat down for a conversation that’s part of Binky Patrol’s 30th anniversary series on the All Volunteer All Heart podcast.

Barbara joined the chapter as its fundraiser, connector, and what she calls “the mouth.” Rheumatoid arthritis limits the cutting and tying, but not the reach — she tapped her network at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, where students learned to make fleece blankets on their dorm room floors and sent photos of roommates doing it together. She organized donors, ran events, and brought in a web of alumni and community members who became regulars.

The stories they carry are not small ones.

After a high school student named Maren was murdered on prom day by a classmate who asked her out in a stairwell, Jeanne coordinated blankets for all 199 of Maren’s classmates. They were distributed at what the students thought was a routine assembly. One boy wrote to thank them afterward. He said that when they wrapped the blankets around themselves, they realized everything was going to be okay.

A young man named Ethan has spinal muscular atrophy — a disease equal in severity to ALS. He received one of the Connecticut chapter’s earliest blankets. Doctors told his family he had about a year to live. He is now 21, and his blanket is still with him.

A family from Florida was visiting Connecticut when they were in a serious car accident. The family was split across two or three different hospitals, the Ronald McDonald House was full, and family members were sleeping in hallways.

Jeanne found them through a GoFundMe post. She called, offered blankets, and was invited up to the ICU. She went back with pizza, then ice cream. Years later she sat in the courtroom at the trial of the driver who hit them. Their daughter

Kayleigh, who had been paralyzed, is now studying to become a nurse.

Barbara’s great nephew Peter was her godson, a young man she helped raise. When he was in an accident, Jeanne made him a red, white, and blue blanket — he loved the New England Patriots. He died during the pandemic at 25. His grandmother gave Barbara the blanket after he passed. Two months later — because COVID meant no traditional wake, no gathering — Jeanne organized a Binkathon in her driveway. Twenty-five people showed up. They made blankets in red, white, and blue, and they remembered Peter together.

“All I want is for him to be remembered,” Barbara said. “Don’t forget his father. Don’t forget me. But more importantly, don’t ever forget him.”

Susan’s sister Mary Jo joined toward the end of the conversation. She had delivered blankets in Colorado Springs while serving as full-time caretaker for her husband during his final decline. The children’s hospital staff told her something she hadn’t anticipated: family members who show up unprepared for an overnight crisis are often the ones who need the blanket as much as the patient does.

Susan put it plainly near the end: when recipients come back to make blankets and bring their friends and share what it meant to them, that is the gift — to the volunteer, to the chapter, and to the next child who receives one.

The Connecticut chapter is at roughly 28,000 blankets since founding. This year they’re making 2,000 more to reach 30,000 — one for every year Binky Patrol has been at this work.

“If we ask,” Jeanne said, “they will come.”

You can listen to this conversation and every episode of All Volunteer All Heart at binkypatrol.show. To find a chapter, start one, or learn how to get involved, visit binkypatrol.org.