HELENA — From a pulley system, to climbing through windows, this Helena kids' gang has one mission.
“We have been doing a lot of schoolwork and then once we get our schoolwork done. About noon, we all come over to my house and we start working with rocks and we paint,” said June Forsyth who is a sixth grader at C.R Anderson.
The group of friends, have created traction in the community. At first, they were taking rocks out of the their neighbors' yards. Then, Helena Sand and Gravel donated hundreds of rocks to the kids, and even the Helena Home Depot pitched in with some spray paint. Now each rock is individualized.
“Probably, the rocks that has some weird funny messages on it, and it's like we paint food sometimes and we will say like, 'I keep on paint food, I think, I am really hungry, hope you are happy' and we just watch and it's really funny, because a lot of the time they just start laughing,” Forsyth said.
For Sparks Osborne, who is a fifth-grade student at Hawthrone Elementary, “We do, I do a lot of mine in cursive, then, I outline it, I think it looks cool.”
Once the rocks are completed, they have a special way they deliver the rocks: they ring the doorbell, then immediately run away.
With modern technology, the kids were quickly caught with surveillance cameras on doors.
Mike Gurnett was one of the neighbors who received a rock on his doorstep, “The doorbell rang. I came out and looked around and there was no UPS or FedEx Package, and nobody was in the yard and I looked down, and I saw the rock on our step,” he said.
There are no hard feelings from this neighbor; he was happy to receive a rock.
“It’s just kind of inspiring, I guess, with all the distancing, and of the tension, the innocence of these kids. They are just going around the neighborhood, just kind of a happy thought,” Gurnett said.
So, if you hear a ring at the door, and hear, "run!", it might just be some innocent fun, and some kids ready to put a smile on your face.
