Sharon Russell poses for a photo on Friday at the Open Door Mission in Rutland. Photo by Jon Olender.

It was the night before Christmas Eve and Sharon Russell, director of Rutland’s Open Door Mission, was finishing up and getting ready to head home. As she chatted with the cook, a woman and her young son entered through the back door looking for the thrift store.

It was closed, and Russell was ready to turn them away to get home to her own family when little Ernie turned to his mother.

“But mommy, I don’t have any shoes,” he said.

That was enough for Russell to spring into action.

While she helped the pair pick out shoes, the little boy removed his hat revealing a hairless head. Immediately, Russell says, she was reminded of her nephew, Jeremy, who had succumbed to cancer as a child, and she knew the possible fate of this boy in front of her.

She ran downstairs to the cook and pleaded with tears in her eyes, for her to help these people.

“When you go upstairs, you’ll know why,” Russell said.

The next day, she had arranged for two carloads of presents to be delivered to the family only to find out the boy was in the hospital. With permission, Russell and her employees played Santa Claus for the family at the hospital that year and made Ernie’s last Christmas a special one.

That was over 15 years ago, yet Russell remembers the family as if it were yesterday.

She has been at the shelter in Rutland for 32 years, serving as executive director for 27 years, and at 72, still works full-time.

Before coming to the Open Door, Russell says she worked for another organization that was more about numbers and less about people because of the government funding requirements.

“My feeling was this, if someone was hungry or poor and in need of something, we need very minimal information. Like our soup kitchen, I don’t need to know anything other than ‘Hi, how are ya?’ I don’t like to have to ask a bunch of questions before I help them,” she said.

Russell believes “labels are for cans, not people,” and says she has the freedom to operate that way at the mission because they run solely on donations.

She had been longtime friends with then director John Cassarino, both having grown up in the Italian section of Rutland, and jumped on the opportunity to join him at the Park Street mission.

“I walked over one day, and I said, ‘Hey John, I hear you’re looking for an associate director’ and he said, ‘Yeah, do you know someone interested?’ I said, ‘Yeah, me!’ He told me it was a tough business. And I said, I’m little, yes, but I’m a very strong woman, and I can handle myself. The worst that can happen is you give me a try, and I fail,” Russell recalled.

Russell’s daughter and associate director of 17 years, Tammy Duclos, said her mother doesn’t like to accept the praise she deserves.

“She doesn’t believe in being congratulated for what she does, even though she is,” Duclos said. “She doesn’t like to be the center of attention.”

Also Duclos talked about Russell’s constant urge to help people.

“During our toy drive, Sharon will see people come in to get toys and grab them and bring them into our pantries and coolers and send them out with boxes of food,” she said.

Also, Russell is known for frequently going into her own pocket to provide for those in need, if the donation-run mission does not have what they require. Or calling up the local shoe store and arranging for someone in need to be fitted with new shoes. Or venturing into the woods in search of a homeless camp to offer a helping hand. Or placing money on the counter for someone searching their pockets at the grocery store checkout, her daughter said.

Duclos says Russell only asks that when they are able, they in turn ‘pay it forward.’

Despite being the backbone of the organization, as she spoke about the attributes of the mission, Russell made sure to include her staff.

“It’s never an ‘I,’ always a ‘we.’ We work as a team,” she clarified.

Russell has continued to serve the mission for more than a quarter of a century just to help people.

“I do it to see the smile on a face that once was sad,” she concluded.