As Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic School continues to recover after their September 2 break in, the Santa Clarita community has demonstrated its kindness and support in helping aid the recovery of the school.

The Newhall grade school was vandalized in the middle of the night on the Saturday of September 2 by currently anonymous suspects, leaving destruction inside multiple classrooms. The vandals broke in through smashing windows and continued to break desks, smash computer screens, discharge fire extinguishers and ultimately wreck the classrooms. 

I was able to catch up with Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s principal, Sharon Krahl, on how OLPH is recuperating from the incident.

“I am still overwhelmed by the abundance of support we received,” said Krahl.

Members of the Santa Clarita community came together in many different ways to help the school recover as quickly as possible, helping clean, board up windows, bring food to workers, offering donations and replacements for items broken, and much more to alleviate the stress the event placed at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. 

Volunteers worked the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday following the incident, allowing students to come back to regularly scheduled school on Wednesday.

“By noon on Sunday, we had volunteers stopping by wanting to help,” Krahl said. The fast acting support of the Santa Clarita community proved very beneficial to Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s ability to bounce back from the break-in.

The collaboration of the Santa Clarita community in effort to help Our Lady of Perpetual Help has not only proven to Krahl, but to all Santa Clarita citizens, how caring and supportive the people of this town truly are, and continues to inspire the OLPH family to stay resilient through hardship.

“Santa Clarita is filled with good people; I am fortunate to be a part of such a caring community,” Krahl said.