Copperas Cove Soup kitchen’s fence gets facelift

By BRITTANY FHOLER 
Cove Leader-Press

The fence line at the new location of the Copperas Cove Soup Kitchen received a facelift Friday afternoon thanks to Junior Miss Five Hills Hayley Sawyer and other members of the Five Hills Scholarship Pageant royalty. 
Sawyer’s platform is about helping the homeless, “Hayley Helps the Homeless”, and she has been busy keeping true to her promise. As Junior Miss Five Hills, Sawyer has participated with her fellow royalty in the Stomp Out Homelessness 5K Run/Walk sponsored by the Refuge Corporation earlier this summer as well as holding collection drives to benefit the Copperas Cove Soup Kitchen and the former residents of the Killeen homeless shelter operated by Friends in Crisis. The two drives collected a total of 18 shopping carts worth of goods for those in need. 
Sawyer also took over organizing the 4th annual CCISD Laundry Day, where volunteers collected all of the lost and found items left behind at the end of the school year and washed them at Wells Laundry. More than 2,000 pounds of laundry were washed, dried and folded. Representatives from Communities in Schools collected some of the clothes for the next school year and any extra items were donated to the Optimist Thrift Store. 
During National Lemonade Day, Sawyer earned enough money to donate $750 to the Copperas Cove Soup Kitchen. 
She also worked with Walmart to get 30 bags of mulch donated to plant gardens at the Soup Kitchen. 
As she and Volunteer Pageant Director Wendy Sledd searched for more ways to help the homeless, the Soup Kitchen gave them a list of things they needed done, including a paint job on the fence of their new location at 501 N. Main St. 
Sawyer drew up a picture of how she wanted the mural to look and with the help of Teen Miss Five Hills Mary Rohrick, Young Miss Five Hills Angelica Torres, and Junior Mister Five Hills Jackson Gibbs, she got to work. 
Using paint, rollers and brushes donated by Sherwin Williams, the Five Hills Royalty made quick work of laying down the first layer of white paint that would be the backdrop of the mural. As time went by, they added black letters spelling out “Copperas Cove Soup Kitchen”, as well as a tree with leaves and apples and blades of grass across the bottom. 
Sawyer said she chose helping the homeless as her platform “because I’ve seen so many homeless people on the streets. I felt bad every time I saw them, so I decided that I could help them too.”
Despite the heat and bugs, Sawyer and the rest of the royalty pushed through to complete their mural in one day. 
“It feels amazing because I know that everything I do, every single stroke I make on this fence has a benefit towards the soup kitchen,” Sawyer said.