The old adage, “What goes around, comes around,” proved to be true when an observant and aware resident turned the tables on two individuals who where “borrowing” from the Salvation Army Thrift Store and Service Center in Troy.

Kim May, director of the Pike County Salvation Army, said material donations to the Salvation Army are often left outside the store on South Brundidge Street on Sundays.

“Of course, we’re closed on Sunday so the donations are visible to anyone who happens by,” May said. “On a regular basis, someone was taking the donations, going through them and throwing anything they didn’t want back in front of the store. It happened so often that someone began to notice.”

Time and time again, two women would stop, toss the donations in their car and speed off.

After a while, the observer thought, “enough’s enough.”

An armadillo was prowling around the observer’s yard and he was trying to find a way to get rid of it. He decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

“He caught the armadillo and put it in a big, plastic bag and ‘donated’ it to the Salvation Army one Sunday morning,” May said. “The two women stopped, threw the bag in the car and took off. They haven’t been back.”

May shared the interesting and humorous anecdote with the members of the Salvation Army Advisory Board, Wednesday to show the innovative ways that residents support the charitable organization.

“We’ve had a good month because of the strong support that we get in so many different ways,” May said. “We’re still sorting through the non-perishable food items that we received from the Postal Letter Carriers Food Drive that was conducted by our local post offices. Troy, Goshen and Banks all contributed food items to us and we really appreciate their support. We always need items for our food pantry and we got a trailer truckload from the Letter Carriers’ efforts.

“Actually, we got double, maybe triple, the number of items that we usually receive from the drive.”

May also reported on the local Salvation Army’s relief efforts for the victims of the April 27 tornadoes that caused death and destruction throughout the central and northern sections of Alabama.

“With Carter Sanders’ direction, board members and volunteers from the Colley Senior Complex and the Goshen Senior Center cooked 814 quarts of camp stew and delivered it to tornado victims in Webster in Calhoun County,” May said. “That was enough camp stew to feed 1,600 people.”

May said those who traveled Webster helped distribute the camp stew at an area church to tornado victims and to work crews. Some of the camp stew was delivered to outlying areas by volunteers from the Webster area.

May also reported the donation of a 1999 RV to the local center. “This is a very large donation,” May said. “The RV is extremely clean and only has 58,000 miles. We will offer it for sale and it should bring a rather large amount. We are very appreciative of this donation – of all donations because they allow us to help more local people in need.”

An immediate need of the Salvation Army is furniture. “The sale of furniture at our Thrift Store is our biggest money maker,” May said. “I don’t know if people are selling their old furniture at garage sales or what but we just aren’t getting those donations like we used to. So we really invited donations of furniture.”

May said that the center also has a need, from time to time, for a large storage area. “Every now and then, we get donations of items that we don’t have room to store,” she said.

“So, if anyone has a large storage area available for temporary use, it would be helpful to have it available to us.”