Angels of Mercy Keep Busy Thinking of Others
The session always starts with a prayer. Then out come the grinders, the soldering irons, the clippers. There is work to do.
This garage in Orange is where angels are made. Stained glass, gold-plated, 7 to 9 inches tall from feet to halo. You can’t buy them. You really don’t want one. They’re for sick children or their parents, and survivors of firefighters and law enforcement personnel who have died in the line of duty.
They’ve been given to the families of the passengers and crew of the planes that went down on Sept. 11 and to those killed in the Pentagon. Most recently, they were made in honor of the Columbia astronauts.
Pam Senft, 60, is the youngest on this assembly line. She and Ken Serapin, 80, are wrapping lead borders around the glass to make wings. Willie Zoller, 83, has clamped an angel between wooden blocks so he can finish soldering. Harry Rogers, 65, is using steel wool for the finishing work.
Rick Cryder, 55, with shaggy white hair and a droopy mustache, stands at a workbench. He oversees the operation as he works on a stained-glass window of Urk, a San Diego police dog that was shot to death. Cryder’s guest room is filled with 100 angels packed in bags ready for delivery. Neatly stacked in the garage are colored sheets of stained glass and more angels.
“Even my friends tell me I’m obsessed,” he said.
The green angels are for sheriff’s deputies, blue for police officers. Red is for firefighters. What Cryder calls the glory angels, in pink and white, are given to mothers whose children have been taken off life support. An angel kneeling in prayer is given to children with life-threatening diseases and others facing tragedy, such as the astronauts’ families.
Cryder calls his work Angels of Love and considers it his Christian ministry, although he isn’t a minister. He talks often of God and spirituality. But he doesn’t use the angels to proselytize. The angels are a symbol to him.
“Not one religion doesn’t believe in a spiritual angel or that energy of comfort around you,” he said. “Even people who are nonbelievers like the thought of guardian angels around.”
Most of all, he said, the angels let vulnerable people know that someone is thinking of them.
“When parents are given the news of their child’s heart condition, and they come to understand they may be losing their child, it’s so scary,” said Nancy Hayes, a clinical social worker with the UCLA Pediatric Heart Transplant Program, where about 80 kids and their families have received angels. “They feel desperate about it. To know that a stranger does this out of their own caring, they’re very touched by it.”
The angel makers, all retired, say they receive their own rewards through the volunteer effort. Rogers’ eyes welled up as he told of a recent visit to Children’s Hospital of Orange County to present 100 angels to children with life-threatening diseases.
“I can’t tell you about the feelings you get when you hand it to a family member and it’s, ‘Wow, you made this for me? And you don’t know me?’ ” the retired heavy-duty equipment mechanic said. “I got to give it to a grandma rocking a baby. It was awesome.”
Cryder, the man behind the angels, had made stained-glass windows for friends and churches. One of his windows, a scene based on 19th century photos of his wife’s relatives in rural Wisconsin, dominates his living room. Cryder, who worked for 20 years for an outdoor advertising firm in Arizona, moved to Orange in 1997, when his wife received a job transfer.
He works on the angels six days a week, while his wife works as an administrative assistant. He has two grown daughters from a previous marriage. “There are days I wonder: ‘Am I being fair to my family?’ ” Cryder said. “ ‘Should I get a real job?’ ”
He pays for the angels with donations and out of his own pocket. He gets a discount for materials. Cryder is in the process of applying for nonprofit status so the donations will be tax deductible.
He began by giving the angels to friends and family. Then in 1997, he started going to Children’s Hospital of Orange County to donate platelets for the child of one of his wife’s co-workers. Each time he visited the hospital, he would take the nurses an angel to give to one of the patients.
On a visit in December 1997, Cryder gave an angel to 4-year-old Derek Kuhs, who had a rare blood disorder.
“I cannot tell you how much it means when a child is fighting for his life and has been suffering for so long and someone you don’t know comes in and hands you a beautiful angel,” said Derek’s mother, Gloria.
Derek died about two years later.
Soon after, Cryder made angels for the families of all 168 Oklahoma City bombing victims, even though the terrorist act had occurred three years earlier. When he finished after about six months’ work, Cryder sent the angels to a foundation connected to the memorial there.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Cryder went into overdrive. He taught Rogers, a neighbor, how to make angels. Rogers brought in a group of retirees from his church to help. They made 825 angels. Cryder and Rogers flew to New York to present them in time for the Sept. 11 anniversary memorial service last year.
This year, Cryder’s goal is to make 2,000 angels. You can offer him a donation, but don’t try to buy an angel, even if you explain that he can use the money to make more.
“Maybe I’m a goofball to some degree,” Cryder said. “I guess I’ve always been passionate about my causes.”
