A woman with graying hair peeks her head through the open door of Apt. 212. Catching the occupant next to her sewing table, which takes up almost half her living room, the intruder grins and quips: "The quilt lady."

Indeed, Pat McAllister and her loyal team of retired Immaculate Heart of Mary community members and volunteers turn out 60 colorful 36"-by-45" quilts for foster care and needy kids every two months like, well, clockwork. In only five years, they've made 1,540 quilts --- counting the blue-and-white, pensive-looking penguin one that's laid across the sewing table now.

"We make a quilt a day on the average," says the gregarious 72-year-old. "And it's really a community effort. There's a top part, a bottom piece and stuff called batting in the middle. I sew the two pieces together and then send them on to the next part. Every two months, we call a gang together and have a little quilting bee where we finish them off."

The 'Grandmas'

It all started half a decade ago with a Ventura County group appropriately called the "Grandmas." Their altruistic mission is giving away backpacks to children about to enter new foster homes. The Grandmas thought it would be a great idea if, like Linus from "Peanuts," the foster-care kids also had a blanket to take with them. So McAllister and her fellow IHM ladies jumped at the idea, in no time producing 40 quilts every 60 days.

Next a group of anti-poverty L.A. lawyers called Uncommon Good asked the retired women religious to make quilts for kids living on skid row and downtown in SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotels. So they started cranking out 20 extra quilts every other month for them, too.

McAllister, who coordinated all this labor, thought her merry band of sewers had reached its capacity. But then came The BEARS.

It began with making stuffed toys for local poor kids who often didn't have a single toy of their own. Working with a pattern from a friend in Minnesota, McAllister cuts them out of blue, red, black and yellow bolts of cloth. The crazier the pattern, the better. Then she puts the cutouts in packages of 20 and takes them to IHM community meetings, pleading: "Who would like to sew some bears?" or "Who has a niece or neighbor who can sew?"

The bears come back to McAllister's apartment, which resembles a mini garment factory, to be stuffed by aging community members every Monday afternoon. Usually, at least a dozen seniors show up, turning out 20 stuffed animals a week, 80 every month.

After three years, the bears, with painted faces and bright ribbons around their necks, have wound up in the arms of poor girls and boys well beyond Los Angeles County. Some, in fact, have made it to orphanages in Tijuana, while others have traveled all the way to Haiti and even Africa. One favorite destination has turned out to be convalescent and nursing homes, where Alzheimer's patients enjoy, as much as toddlers, holding something soft and cuddly.

"This bear project has taken on a life of its own," McAllister reports, shaking her head.

Two reasons

So why does the retired math, science, library science teacher and librarian busy herself with all these stuffed bears and quilts?

"Because there are kids out there who don't have it so good," she says matter of factly. "Another reason is because there are ladies who live here in this apartment building who don't have it so good. You know, they want, they need something to do of some fulfillment in life. To sit looking at the TV is no good.

"They have been active all of their life. And now they can't see too well, they don't hear too well. But they can sure stuff bears," she says, before breaking up. "And we have some who had strokes and only have one good hand. They can pick up the stuffing and hand it to the next person who puts it in."

McAllister believes the Lord sent her to the IHM retirement community in the mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles for a reason. After retiring herself from Paraclete High School in Lancaster, she was leading a leisurely life of tending to her garden and dogs and "nobody else" in the Antelope Valley.

So in 2000, facing knee surgery, she moved in with some 30 other retired community members along with five formerly homeless single women and their families.

And she's never looked back.

"Why do I do it?" she asks herself, looking around the cluttered room. "Probably like all these other ladies, you know, I've always done something for other people all my life. Whether you're teaching or counseling or just listening, you've always been doing things for people --- trying to make it better.

"You are taught from the very beginning that life has more meaning than just you," says McAllister, a graduate of St. Matthew Elementary and St. Anthony High School in Long Beach and Immaculate Heart College. "You are put here on earth to do things for other people."

Then, half-smiling, she shrugs.

"So, all of my life I've been doing things for others," McAllister adds. "Now that I'm retired, this is just a different aspect."

Editor's note: "The Faith in Our Lives" is a series spotlighting Catholics in various walks of life, and how they connect faith with what they do.