Broken Arrow Woman's Hobby Benefits Abused Children

Usually hobbies are activities we pursue for our own enjoyment.

Occasionally, people can turn a hobby into something that genuinely benefits others, like a Broken Arrow woman whose hobby of rehabilitating old dolls has given some kids who desperately need it, something to hold on to.

Arleeta Fulton is showing me around her spare bedroom full of dolls. This is her hobby. She rehabs old dolls.

"Most of their hair is just all over. I wash their hair and bathe them," she said.

She makes new clothes for them. Someone gave her a little boy doll and suggested she make him a suit.

She's found old dolls at garage sales, and, of course, when people find out she does this, they give her more, along with boxes of fabric and lace.

She makes the clothes and sometimes enters her work to be judged at the fair–successfully too–but she's found an outlet more satisfying: abused children. She heard a presentation by the Laura Dester shelter which temporarily houses abused children.

"My grandkids have so much, and those little kids have nothing," Fulton said.

Over the past few years, she's given the shelter more than 100 cleaned up and re-dressed dolls. Her mother and grandmother taught her to sew years ago. The re-dressing starts at the kitchen table.

Using the doll she's dressing, she sort of guesses the size, then free hands and pattern out of newspaper. She cuts the pieces, hand-stitches them together, and does the final work on a machine.

"I've already started dressing some for next year," she said.

She has a basket full of work to do, all cleaned up and ready for clothes and as long as there's a need seems like that basket is never empty.

"Now it seems like the more I give away, the more people give to me," Fulton said.