KarunaNews Story

It is a heartwarming story of small town kindness that brought together two unrelated families. Gerd and Elaine Schmidt helped raise Dixie Marie Judilla's son so he could stay with her in Canada. Dixie, who came from the Philippines in 2008, was facing single parenthood alone. Then Gerd, who came to Canada by himself from Germany in the mid-1950s, learned her story, and he and Elaine offered to look after Dixie's son while she worked. The two families remain close, although Gerd died in 2017. "I always tell him I'm your Canadian grandma," Elaine said of Dixie's son.