It is a bit unnerving, even when you know it is coming, to walk into Jessica Bachus’ home office and have more than 80 dolls stare back at you.
The reason they are there, though, is a terrific little story about compassion, persevering in the midst of tragedy, hope and, for good measure, Christmas.
It goes back exactly two years ago this week.
In 2007, Jessica Bachus had lost her second child, Kenzi, who was stillborn after six months of pregnancy. She was, by her accounting, disconsolate.
And then rushing right at her was Christmas, by far her favorite time of the year.
She remembered how she and her husband, Kyle, had enthused about how they were going to buy Bailey, their oldest, and Kenzi all kinds of dolls and toys in celebration of her first Christmas.
It was almost too much.
She decided then she wanted to tame and channel the grief, if for no one other than Bailey.
She began making calls to friends, family and people in the community she and Kyle knew. Would they purchase a doll in Kenzi’s memory?
She would take care of the rest.
She admits now she had no idea what the resulting response would be. In the first week alone, she was inundated with more than 100 dolls.
“I was hoping in my wildest dreams that I’d maybe get 100 dolls, or at least donations for that many. I thought that would be awesome.
“Friends and family, though, they all knew it was to help me get through the holidays.”
Jessica Bachus cries and races out of her living room in search of tissues.
What to do with the dolls that were piling up in her Hilltop home? She got online. She began making calls to shelters, and other groups that assist with abused, neglected and homeless children. It worked.
“At the first place we went with the dolls, a woman came in and grabbed a Cabbage Patch Kid. I’ll never forget the look on her face, that now she could give to her daughter at Christmas something she could have never afforded,” Jessica Bachus remembered.
In all, she distributed close to 300 dolls to poor kids in Denver.
She assumed that was it. But months later, she wondered: Could she do it again, only better and bigger? Her answer was yes. She collected and gave away 800 dolls last year. She started a website, , early this year.
She began hosting fundraisers. An attorney her lawyer husband knows did the application work for free to turn Dolls For Daughters into a nonprofit 501(c)(3). People clamored to join the board and to volunteer.
“When we became a nonprofit, our world changed,” Jessica Bachus said, still wiping at tears. “I feel what (Kenzi) taught me was to be a better mother and a better person.”
She is surprised every day now, she said. At one of the doll dropoff sites, a worker called and said there were 20 dolls before Thanksgiving. “The elves,” as she put it, had come over the weekend. There were now more dolls there than she could count.
“It is the generosity of people I have never met who are keeping Kenzi’s memory alive,” Jessica Bachus said. “A little girl who is gone now is making a big difference. And I think she always will.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
