Helping parents for child's sake

As she looks at her own son, now a high schooler, she sometimes thinks about Donovan Hendrix and how he would probably be getting his driver's license and looking forward to the prom — if he weren't dead.

Shellberg says Donovan, a dirty-faced but apparently happy little boy, used to run to the mailbox to meet her when she was a mail carrier in his Northwest Marana neighborhood in the mid-1990s.

He died on April 22, 1996, from head trauma complications following a beating at the hands of his father's girlfriend, Betty Jeanne Armstrong.

The following year, Armstrong was sentenced to life in prison for causing Donovan's death, and the boy's father, Daryl Hendrix, was sentenced to 61 years for allowing the abuse.

"Yeah," Shellberg says — she knew him, recognized him.

"I saw a happy kid. He was always dirty," she says. But "things came out" after he died. He couldn't have been very happy about many of the things that were happening to him, such as beatings, untreated injuries.

Shellberg recalls testimony that came out of the trial. It detailed broken and rebroken bones, an untreated and nearly fatal skin infection, and bungled follow-ups by Child Protective Services on reports that Donovan was being abused.

"The system failed him," says Shellberg.

The trial and sentencing officially ended the tragic life and death of the little boy on her mail route. But Shellberg didn't want to just put Donovan's tragedy on a shelf.

"It broke my heart," she says. "But it was one of those things where I don't want to watch a 5-year-old boy just be gone.

"I wanted to do something that would make people think."

So Shellberg started the Community Diaper Drive, now in its 10th year.

To Peggy Korte, a teacher who runs the Teenage Parent Program at Marana High School, it makes sense. The program's teen parents and their babies get some of the diapers collected in Northwest Tucson.

"Obviously, most teen parents are pretty low-income," she says. And diapers are "a necessity."

Korte says some of the young parents look at the diaper program and see it as proof that there are people in the community who care about them.

Shellberg hopes the program makes people think about their own children.

"My son is a year older (than Donovan), and I look at him and I think … this year Donovan would be getting his driver's license, he'd be going to high school, he'd be getting his first kiss. He was just an adorable little boy. No child should have to endure that."

Shellberg is a dust devil of energy, nearly always driving some sort of community action from her base of operations — the humble little Rillito Post Office on the west side of Interstate 10 near the Arizona Portland Cement plant. After years as a rural route mail carrier, she became postmaster of the Rillito station three years ago.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and Shellberg figures it makes sense to mark Donovan's life by using it to help other kids.

"The diaper drive was just a means to get the message out. I would like every parent to look at their child and reflect on how they are raising their child. You have this opportunity to turn this helpless baby into a contributing adult.

"If we all thought about it, I don't think we'd need Child Abuse Prevention Month."

Northwest

l What: 10th Annual Community Diaper Drive.

l What's needed: Diapers in unopened packages, any size, but large child sizes are particularly in demand.

l When: Throughout April, Child Abuse Prevention Month.

l Where: Drop off at any Tucson-area post office: Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley, Rillito and Cortaro.

l Who is helped: Diapers collected in Northwest Tucson go to the Women, Infants and Children program, which distributes some of them to the Teenage Parents Program at Marana High School. Other Tucson-area contributions are distributed to 18 nonprofit organizations throughout the area, says Diaper Drive organizer Annie Shellberg.

l For more information: Call 682-3706. The Rillito Post Office is at 11651 N. Casa Grande Highway.