Local REALTOR and resident seeks to give back to her community, one charity at a time TORRANCE, Calif., October 1, 2008 Redondo Beach resident Alison Clay-Duboff has had difficult and life-changing experiences that drives her to give to her community in any way that she can. In the few spare moments between her full-time career as a REALTOR?? and raising her family, Clay-Duboff has been involved with community-serving organizations that strive to provide help where it is most needed. Back in 2000, Clay-Duboff was living comfortably with her family in Saudi Arabia until tragedy struck ?? her husband passed away due to a sudden heart attack, and she soon found herself and her family nearly penniless. Much to Clay-Duboff??s surprise and relief, the expatriate community in Saudi Arabia came together and provided help and funds which allowed her to return to the U.S. and start over. "Perfect strangers came up to me and helped. Several people gave me $1,000 and didn??t event know me," Clay-Duboff recalled. "That was a life-saving and eye-opening experience." That experience propelled her into community service. Since then, Alison Clay-Duboff has helped provide Thanksgiving meals for needy families and she volunteered with Habitat for Humanity. With Torrance Rotary??s K-9 Book Drive, she helped provide more than 230,000 books to kids in Los Angeles area local schools. Clay-Duboff has also helped put together "Downtown Sounds", an effort to help Torrance schools continue their music education programs. She speaks at school career days and she is interested in working with the local Meals-on-Wheel program, which helps provide meals to the elderly. Why does she do all this extra work? "I want to give back," said Clay-Duboff. "When I was at the lowest point in my life, perfect strangers came and helped me. And now I want to give back for the rest of my days because of how people saved my life and my daughter??s life." |
