Teen Miss cleans clothes for students

By LYNETTE SOWELL

Cove Leader-Press 

Rows of washing machines and dryers at Wells Laundry on Business 190 kept busy on Saturday as Miss Teen Five Hills Kendra Hicks led a group of royalty and volunteers who washed nearly one ton of abandoned clothing. 

The clothing, to include shirts, jackets and other items, had been left at Copperas Cove Independent School District campuses and were unclaimed as of the end of the school year. 

“I started at J.L. Williams because they had the most, and I went to the elementary schools over the past two days, starting on Tuesday, and we got three carloads full,” Hicks said.

As part of her platform to help homeless students, Hicks took up the idea of collecting from CCISD campus’ lost and found and donating those items back to other students. 

“Today we’re washing, drying, folding and sorting the clothing into boys, girls. We’re sort of eyeballing the sizes because I basically got elementary, a little bit of middle school and high school.

We’re going to have Communities In Schools representatives from all over the region to come and take their pick of the clothes. They’ll give them out to their students next year.”

Hicks said any items not selected by CIS will be donated to the Optimist Club Thrift Store in Copperas Cove. 

“They help a lot with disaster relief, and that’s important, and especially because these are coming from students, they’re going right back to the students. We just want to circulate it through Cove because this is where it comes from.”

Kenny Wells owns seven laundromats in the Central Texas area and donated all the quarters for the washing and drying, so the Five Hills royalty did the hundreds of pounds of laundry at no cost.

“I like to give back to the community, and I think the young ladies have a good project. I like to see young people giving back to the community,” Wells said. “You have to give more back to a community than you take from it, or you won’t have a very good community.”

Hicks was thankful for the support of her fellow royalty. 

“All of our older royalty are here; they’re helping so much. It’s amazing. I couldn’t have gotten this done so quickly without them.” 

Hicks is also working on her next, larger project coming up toward the end of summer vacation, the annual Stuff The Bus event, to be held August 4-6 at the Copperas Cove Wal-Mart.

“I’m working on coordinating the Stuff The Bus schedule. I’m in the mist of that and scheduling people and performances for that, right up until the weekend we do it,” Hicks said.