Ann Frank, a volunteer at Project Backpack, will ask others on her trips to collect toiletries from their hotel rooms so she can donate them to the organization’s clients. 

“She brings in bag and bags of toiletries,” said Judy Pearlstone, executive director of Project Backpack, which  helps children who are victims of domestic violence. 

Frank does not advertise her volunteer service. In fact, leaders of the various organizations where she volunteers —  Project Backpack, the Conservative synagogue Kol Rinah and Jewish day schools, among others — only inadvertently found out about her other contributions. 

She is like a caring, dedicated parent who happens to have multiple families. 

“Everything she does is very quiet,” said Micki Kinglsey, who volunteers in the office at Kol Rinah, where Frank runs the gift shop. 

Kingsley found about her volunteering at Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School only because “I asked her to help with something and she said she couldn’t do it because she was doing something else.”

Frank, 82, was born in East St. Louis, where she wrote the prices on cans at her grandmother’s grocery. She enjoyed it and said she has worked in retail ever since. 

She moved to University City during high school and started attending Temple Israel. The synagogue did not have air conditioning on her wedding day, July 3, 1955. 

“It was probably the hottest day of the year. Everyone remembered that,” said Frank, who has four children and 10 grandchildren. 

She and her husband, who died in 2000, owned an auto parts store at Hanley Road and St. Charles Rock Road for more than 30 years. She also has worked as a cashier at the Dierbergs grocery in Creve Coeur for 17 years. She spends 16 hours spread across four shifts each week at the store and said she enjoys it because of her interactions with customers.

“I watch the families grow up,” she said. “I just like talking and being around people.” 

Frank was willing to share how she divides her unpaid hours. She spends three hours at the Kol Rinah gift shop, three hours at Project Backpack and a two-hour shift each week helping with lunch either at Epstein Hebrew Academy or Mirowitz.

But that’s just the official regimen. Frank, who had been a member of Shaare Zedek Synagogue before it merged with Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel, prepares the presents for the tisches at bar and bat mitzvahs, and coordinates meals and minyans for people who are sitting shiva, said Kingsley, who has volunteered at the synagogue for four years. 

Frank also established a chesed fund in her husband’s memory that sponsors shiva trays and helps people in the hospital. She is active in NA’AMAT, an organization that provides assistance to women and children in Israel. And she regularly gives rides to people from a variety of groups to doctor’s appointments or the grocery store.

Asked how she connects with the people she drives, Frank did not have a clear answer.

“From NA’AMAT. From the store. Just being around,” she said. 

Of Frank’s efforts, Kingsley said: “Nothing is ever too much when you ask her to do something.”

Frank and Project Backpack’s Pearlstone met because their children were in dance school together, and they stayed in touch through their involvement in NA’AMAT. Shortly after Pearlstone started Project Backpack in 1999, she recruited Frank to volunteer, and the two women have worked together ever since. 

The organization provides 250 to 300 backpacks filled with necessities and comfort items each month to agencies that help children who have been removed from their homes, sometimes with only the clothes they were wearing.

On Thursdays, Frank darts from the gift shop at the synagogue in University City to Project Backpack in Bridgeton to help pack the bags. Frank also has spoken on behalf of the organization, served as a greeter at fundraisers and gone shopping to purchase items for the organization. 

And Frank hates shopping, Pearlstone said. But in recent summers, around the time of back-to-school sales, Frank has shown up at the organization’s headquarters with her car “loaded to the gills” with school supplies. 

“We all stood back and said, ‘Wow, look what Ann did,’ ” said Pearlstone, who spent 45 years teaching and continues as a substitute at Epstein Hebrew Academy.

Frank explained her motivation for volunteering in an unemotional way. 

“It’s been there, and I have always done it,” she said. “I don’t know. I just like being around people. I’m a people person. What can I tell you.”

Ann Frank

Age: 82

Family: Four children, 10 grandchildren.

Home: Unincorporated St. Louis County

Occupation: Cashier at Dierbergs; has worked in retail her entire life.

Fun fact:  She has seen hundreds of shows at theaters throughout St. Louis.