The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript began our Hometown Hero series in April. The first two heroes we featured are the type of people we’re looking to spotlight – people dedicated to improving their communities and the lives of the people who live in them.

In April, we featured Kathleen LaRou, director of the Jaffrey Food Pantry.

LaRou’s passion for service goes back to her childhood. It was instilled by her mother June, with whom she worked and ran the food pantry for years. Through the pantry, she works with New Hampshire Food Bank, local farms and grocery stores to provide quality food to people in the community who need it.

However, her work to provide food for those who need it doesn’t end there, as she supervises Jaffrey’s Meals on Wheels distribution site. She also helps improve and promote downtown Jaffrey as a board member of TEAM Jaffrey.

Why does she do it? “It really does make you feel good to do something for somebody else.”

For May’s Hometown Hero, Linda Quintanilha of Bennington, fighting to get her daughter Mary, who is on the autism spectrum, the services she needed to attend the same classes as other students in the ConVal schools wasn’t enough. Instead, she was spurred by a passion for equity and an understanding that not every parent was as fortunate as she was in her to fight for people with disabilities.

That fight has taken her to Jaffrey-Rindge and other school districts, to the State House in Concord, to the presidency of the ABLE NH advocacy group and the ConVal School Board. She has helped change the way school districts treat students with disabilities, procure money to provide families with services and make the City of Concord a model for accessibility. And she has spread the word, helping others fight through her organizing and training efforts so they can have the “strong shoulders” she says are required.

First and foremost, she said she doesn’t want anyone to steal people’s dignity in a system that she said is “really set up to steal dignity.”

If you know someone who fits the bill to be a Hometown Hero, please let us know by filling out a nomination form at ledgertranscript.com/specialpages/hometown-heroes.

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