It all starts when people ask her about the "interesting" bracelet and necklace she wears all the time made with a nylon string and pop tabs.
Then Annalise Lujan tells them the story: She is collecting pop tabs to help pay for a woman's medical treatment, and the necklace is worn to attract more donations.
The 4-year-old "caring spirit" - as her family and friends describe her - doesn't even know the woman.
She came up with the idea of helping a stranger after overhearing a conversation between her mom and her uncle during a family summer weekend at Roosevelt Lake. The uncle asked for the pop tabs and explained he was saving them to help a patient.
"I was just listening but Annalise was listening, too," said Maryann Estrada Lujan, Annalise's mother.
After that conversation, Annalise got a blue nylon string, put the tabs in the end and asked her mom to tie it to her arm.
Estrada told her not to wear that "because it's ugly" and didn't match Annalise's outfit.
"But she said it's OK if it's ugly," Estrada said. "Because she needs to help this lady to get better."
Eight months and three bracelets later, Annalise had collected 2,863 pop tabs.
She's even asked the school bus driver to help.
"I want them to feel better," she said when asked why she was helping.
When she sees anyone with a can, she'll ask them for their top tab, her mom said.
This is not the first time Annalise has shown a desire to help others.
"It's in her nature. She is a very sensitive little girl, loving and caring," said Maria Elena Calderón, her pre-school teacher at Tolson Elementary School.
Calderón remembered one time when Annalise wanted to donate the money in her piggy bank to a school fundraiser to help Haiti.
"I told her not to because it was her savings," said Calderón. "But she did. She gave up all her money."
Annalise's class got second among the classrooms that raised the most money, and Calderón said she was always pushing her classmates to participate.
It turns out that the lady for whom Annalise has been collecting the pop tabs is not one person, but many who benefit from the collection. Her uncle collects the pop tabs as well as his co-workers at Honeywell, a manufacturer of aerospace products and service provider, to benefit the Ronald McDonald House.
The employees have done that for years, said Eileen Bedel, who is in charge of the tabs collection.
The Ronald McDonald House runs the Pop Tabs program, which helps pay the home's operating costs, according to their Web site. They receive help from churches, clubs, scout troops and businesses.
Annalise was recently told by her parents that the tabs will be for the children at the Ronald McDonald House. She'll take the tabs there April 18, on her birthday.
"It will be her gift to someone else," Estrada said, "on her own birthday."
Contact reporter Mariana Alvarado at 573-4597 or malvarado@azstarnet.com
