"The Glove Lady" Warms Hands & Hearts

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ― Walking along the streets of San Francisco's tough Tenderloin neighborhood, Toni Dukes is in no hurry. In fact, she's stopping constantly.

"Ma'am you look like you're cold trying to keep warm," she tells a woman huddled into her coat. "I'm going to give you a pair of gloves and a hat, ok?"

And that's why Toni is here: to hand out gloves, hats, and umbrellas to people on the streets.

"I'm not with an organization," Toni explains. "It's just me solo."

It's a project she started three years ago when she was driving home from a night shift.

"I would drive through this community and notice people out who were cold and I thought what could I do to help them?"

Over the years, Toni has given out hundreds of gloves to strangers, earning her the nickname The Glove Lady. But at work, she goes by a much different title: San Francisco Dispatcher 173. She commutes two hours from her home in Stockton to work as a 911 call taker for San Francisco's Emergency Services Department. Her fellow dispatchers call her "fun" and "compassionate."

Coworker Dana Granby says, "To give out gloves and umbrellas to people and then come and work an 8 and 10 hour day and then hit the same circuit on the way back home to do it all over again, she's - yeah - amazing!"

Now those coworkers pitch in with small donations they leave anonymously in her cubby.

"Those little secret gifts that are in my cubby, they are part of what makes this happen," Toni says.

But Toni herself is the one on the street every time. So what made her stop that first time?

"It's just in me," she says. "You don't have to have millions of dollars to do something. And in my case, I don't have millions of dollars to do it. I may have a dollar or two, and I know it would make a difference to somebody."

Now Toni hopes to expand her program to other cities by building an organization to attract sponsors and volunteers. So for warming the hands and hearts of people on the streets of the city, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Toni Dukes.

By Kate Kelly

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)