Marysville woman trades hats for smiles

For the last two decades, magic has been happening at an all-you-can eat buffet in Marysville but it has nothing to do with the food.

This is a story about how you can find kindness and compassion in some of the most unusual places.

At the Golden Corral, Debbie Nava is in the corner booth, knitting away furiously. She’s creating beautifully decorated hats and once she’s done, she gives them away to kids at the restaurant.

It takes her about two hours to finish each brightly colored cap, but she usually comes here, armed with a dozen that she’s worked on during the week.

“I have a duck hat in my pocket this morning because it’s Easter time and a lot of my hats this morning have flowers on them because it’s spring,” she says.

Every few minutes, she looks up from her knitting needles and figures out which table she’s going to approach next. “I’m looking for kids who might fit the hat, either because of the size of their head, the color matches what they’re wearing, or the happy smile on their face,” she says.

The families are surprised when she walks up and offers her hats. They often ask if they can make a donation but she refuses to take any money. Nava is not an employee at Golden Corral. She’s a paying customer who’s made a point of coming here with her husband, David, just about every weekend for the last twenty years.

“I do it because the kids get such a kick out of it,” she says. And Nava gets a kick out of it, too. She says it makes her feel so good to know that each hat creates a memory for the child who receives it.

Nava recalls running into a young man at the local grocery store. He excitedly told her that he remembered getting his first hat from her when he was 5 years old and it’s something he still cherishes and wears to this day.

“What better thank you could a person possibly give?” she asks.

She also shares the touching story of a soldier who came up to her and thanked her for helping his kids while he was at war. He told her that on St. Patrick’s Day, they got green hats, on Valentine’s Day, they got red hats, and around Christmas, they got Santa Claus hats. While he was in Afghanistan, the soldier said his wife would send him a new batch of pictures of the kids every time they got new hats and it helped him deal with being away from his family.

The hats are beautiful and Nava says she’s often asked why she doesn’t sell them.

“Yes, I could sell them, but what’s money worth? It sounds like a contrite answer but money isn’t worth that much when you compare it to the smile on a child’s face,” she says.

One of those priceless smiles came from 5 year old Aubrey, who got a pink hat last weekend while she was eating lunch with her grandma. She says it’s her favorite color and she loves the butterfly and flower on it.

Debbie Wilbur is the restaurant manager and says she can’t remember a weekend that Nava hasn’t been here to cheer everyone up.

“I think it’s great because in this day and age when so many people are out to get something, she’s not. She’s out to give, and it’s from her heart, and you can tell,” Wilbur says.

But Nava insists she’s not that unique. Over the 20 years that she’s been sitting in the corner booth, knitting away, she says she’s seen other customers, also doing random acts of kindness.

“There’s a lot of kindness that’s hidden. It’s behind the corners, and over the booths, and around the tables and you don’t always see it,” she says. “But old-timers like me, we see it.”

As far as how long she plans to continue knitting hats, and giving them away?

“I don’t mean to be flippant, but I’ll probably do it until the day I die,” she says with a laugh. “I’m not going to be a rocket scientist or discover a new vaccine. There are many things I will never do but this is what I do. So I’ll probably do it until then, and I’ll be very happy doing it.”