Brimful With Cheer

Sheri Schrier is the queen of head-wear handouts.

Crocheted caps, painted hats, beanies bearing smiling cats. The kids all smile, some even laugh, when Schrier gives a happy hat.

Schrier, of Rolling Hills Estates, has been giving sick youngsters something to smile about since she started Happy Hats for Kids six years ago. Her nonprofit group visits local hospitals that treat some of the 16,000 children in California who have cancer and AIDS and gives them handmade hats and some hope.

“The warm loving feelings you get when you make a hat is why I do this,” said Schrier, whose group hands out several thousand hats a year. “Giving the hat is the icing on the cake and makes it all worthwhile.”

A retired designer of golf and tennis hats, Schrier began the project on something of a fluke. She had offered to teach a group of five senior citizens how to decorate baseball caps, and when they were finished she suggested that they give the hats to children being treated for cancer, a disease that had claimed her father, brother and grandmother.

When they saw how happy it made the children and their parents, Schrier and the group decided to make more hats. The group grew to include dozens of volunteers who made hundreds of hats, and they eventually moved out of Schrier’s residence into the West Valley Jewish Community Center in West Hills.

Over the years, Happy Hats has evolved into a large organization supported entirely by donations from community groups and such corporations as Mattel and Xerox. Schrier and her volunteers spend hours on the phone soliciting funds and materials.

The Los Angeles Lakers, the Dodgers and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks have given Schrier hundreds of caps. The group also makes floppy hats, felt hats and hats with glued-on baseball bats. Two storage companies have given her space to store craft materials and local restaurants and community centers have offered their facilities for hat-making workshops.

Sewing circles and service-oriented clubs such as the Girl Scouts and the Key Club buy materials and volunteer time to make hats that are taken to hospitals for Valentines Day, Easter, the Fourth of July, Halloween and Christmas celebrations in pediatric wards.

Schrier and her entourage, which includes her husband, Gene, and volunteer Barb LaBianco, teach each group how to decorate hats using a collection of more than 60 computerized hat patterns. They make the hats with a particular hospital in mind, and provide enough for the young patients and their siblings, who also get to pick hats.

Younger children lean toward funky patterns that have sparkles and toys such as plastic Easter eggs covering their bills; teenagers prefer athletic caps with no designs. Some children use the hats to hide the fact that they have lost hair from chemotherapy, while others leave them at the side of their beds as a toy.

“The hats are a nice tool to help children feel like they are not so isolated from the community,” said Linda Glass, a play therapist at Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center, where Schrier has been giving out hats for nearly two years. “For the kids it reaffirms a sense of normalcy because it takes the focus off the cancer.”

When the volunteer groups visit hospitals, the focus is on fun. Schrier recalled being warned by nurses that one 6-year-old was so angry about having cancer that he might throw one of the caps back at her. Schrier decided to take only the knitted and crocheted caps into his room. He picked one right away and asked if he could have another for his sister. Then he asked Schrier if he could give her a hug.

“That’s what happens with a Happy Hat,” Schrier said.

This year, the group is seeking to expand by leaps and bounds. Members hope to give out 20,00 chapeaus and take the Southern California organization nationwide. It’s Schrier’s goal to see a Happy Hat group, with new volunteers, in every state.