Pat Graceffa keeps Sugar Grove town residents informed

Has your dog run off? Is your church having a rummage sale? Are burglars targeting your neighborhood?

Pat Graceffa of Sugar Grove is dedicated to making sure her fellow residents know everything and anything useful going on in the town and the township. To that end, about six years ago she began publishing an email newsletter.

If you want the town to know about something, you tell Graceffa.

“Out here in Sugar Grove, we find that all of the groups I became involved with said they didn’t know how to get word out to everyone,” about their activities, Graceffa said. That would include the Sugar Grove Farmers Market, of which she was a co-organizer, and the former Friends of the Library, of which she was president. She was appointed to the library board recently.

Graceffa said the groups wanted to get information out “in a quick fashion,” that people could read on their phones or computers.

She started by asking people for emails at the farmers market. Her current list has 425 addresses.

The newsletter is not fancy; items are distinguished from each other, at most, by a change in type face, size or color. Sometimes a photo is attached.

The folksy newsletter contains notices about programs offered by clubs and governments, especially when the next American Legion fish fry or pork chop dinner will be held. Graceffa also alerts readers to new businesses, or deals at existing businesses. If there is a topic coming up before the village board that she thinks people may be interested in, she will note that too.

Its schedule is irregular; you may not get one at all one week, or you may get several updates in one day — especially if a lost pet has been sighted or found.

Graceffa makes sure to post as fast as possible if someone reports a lost pet. She said she isn’t sure if the newsletter was the key factor in getting all the dogs that were posted found. But a good tip about how to find a lost house cat, sent in by a reader, may have proved useful to the owner of a lost cat recently, she said. (The tip was to look carefully near your house; the reader said cats tend to stick close to home.)

The connectedness is all the more amazing considering Graceffa, 61, has only lived in Sugar Grove about 10 years.

In that time, her volunteer work has already netted her a Sugar Grove Citizen of the Year award.

Ÿ Want to be added to Graceffa’s distribution list? Email infosglibraryfriends@gmail.com.