IF YOU drive by Connie Chapin’s house in the Highlands neighborhood, you’ll see a Hopelink donation box on her front porch. Collecting food year round is just one way that Chapin gives back to the community that has given so much to her, and where she’s lived her whole life.

This summer she will celebrate 10 years as the owner of Angelfish Swimming, a business that has helped hundreds of children, many of them disabled, learn how to swim and be safe in the water.

This summer will also mark almost 50 years of living on the property where she was born and raised, and where she delights in knowing all her neighbors.

“I reach out to everybody. When someone new moves in, they get a big plate of cookies, and a note that says ‘Welcome to the neighborhood.’ I’m friends with most of my neighbors, and I still stay in touch with many who have moved away.”

Those neighbors have often reached out to help Chapin when times were tough.

When she had to raise the money to apply for a variance to run her new swimming business, neighbors organized a barbecue and silent auction attended by several hundred people that raised almost $10,000–exactly enough to cover the cost of the variance and required modifications. Neighbors and clients wrote more than 150 letters to the city, and nearly 80 of them attended a public hearing, to support her.

When she was chosen for the TV show Extreme Home Makeover in 2007, dozens of those same people took time off work to help build her a new house.

Chapin is a single mother with four children. After her husband left, the aging farmhouse of her childhood--which she had bought from her parents in 1996-- became unsafe, and she couldn’t afford to fix it. She turned to Hopelink for assistance with temporary repairs, as well as food and heat. In gratitude for their help, she now helps them however she can.

A past Hopelink board member, she says she is now an “ambassador.” Besides collecting hundreds of pounds of food a year, she speaks at Hopelink functions, and displays their banner on her float in the Fourth of July parade each year. “They were there for me at a very difficult time,” she says, and she wants to make sure they are there for others who need help. 

IN 2002, Chapin fixed up the old swimming pool in her backyard and began giving swimming lessons. It was a way to earn a living doing something she loved and was good at, without having to pay for the daycare she couldn’t afford. 

She now teaches about 225 kids a week, and has a waiting list. Ninety percent of her students are from Kirkland–about a third live in the Highlands–and the remainder come from Monroe, Issaquah and as far away as Bellingham. Three years ago, she hired an assistant. Katie Oakley, a UW student and swim instructor, says, “You couldn’t have a better boss.”

“Miss Connie,” as she is known, is beloved by students and parents, who say she is patient, skilled and kind, and has worked miracles with their children.

About 10 percent of Chapin’s students are children with special needs. Autism is the most common, but many have physical challenges. “One girl can’t walk, but she loves to float, and is learning to kick her feet.”

Another student’s left side was partially paralyzed at birth. “Her mom told me if I could teach her to swim it would be a miracle.” Just four years later, she joined the swim team.

Chapin believes so strongly in the importance of teaching children to swim that she provides scholarships for needy families out of her own pocket. 

“You learn to read, do math and write. These are life skills that help you survive. Swimming needs to be up there, too. We live around water. Swimming is a life-saving skill.”

Chapin is working to start a nonprofit foundation, Learn to Swim, to collect scholarship donations. She’ll work with Hopelink and other social service agencies to “find the kids who aren’t getting lessons because they can’t afford it.”

As for her experience as an Extreme Home Makeover winner, she says, “It rallied the community at large for something outside themselves out of the goodness of their hearts. I’m humbled to think that people took a week off work to build my house. How can you ever thank people enough?”

Chapin loves “the small town feeling” of living in Kirkland. “We don’t have high-rises and big city craziness, but you can get everything you need here.” She also loves “the water and seeing the mountains.”

But mostly, she loves the many people she has worked with and lived beside all these years. She’ll continue to create community by reaching out to her neighbors. “I want to make it OK to say, 'Hi,' over the fence.”