By Leah Abraham

Reporter

“One moment,” cries the average-looking woman, adorned in a Seahawks jersey, matching blue nails, bright blond hair and an even brighter grin.

Bonnie Fitzgerald makes her way to the door of her home and opens it to a 14-year-old who is accompanied by his foster mother.

The boy is quiet and shy, and isn’t quite sure why he’s at Fitzgerald’s small, yet festively decorated house, packed with pictures of Jimi Hendrix and Marilyn Monroe. After a quick exchange of hellos, Bonnie looks at the boy and exclaims, “I think you need a guitar!”

The boy’s eyes widen and he gasps loudly in disbelief. He looks over at the table that is cluttered with brightly colored ukuleles and guitars of various sizes.

“Would you like one?” Fitzgerald asks. “Would you like to get one for free?”

This isn’t the first guitar Fitzgerald has given away for free. For four years, Fitzgerald, 57, has been buying cheap, broken guitars and ukuleles, fixing it up with the help of her mother, and giving them away to kids for no cost.

It started at a benefit concert Fitzgerald threw with some of her friends in 2012. The concert included local musicians and artists who donated their talents for free to benefit the food bank. Fitzgerald even managed to get a few guitars to give away. At the end of the night, Fitzgerald had collected $800 to give to the Renton Food Bank and found a passion to continue giving the gift of music to those who need it.

Soon after the concert, while shopping at Safeway, Fitzgerald saw a kid seated in a shopping cart, shredding on his air-guitar. She approached the boy’s mother and asked, “Can he have a guitar?” Fitzgerald had a habit of carrying around guitars in her car and it just so happened that she had a small guitar in her trunk that very day. When the mother said yes, Fitzgerald went to her car, grabbed the guitar and gave it to the boy.

“He was playing it all through the store!” says Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald, who finds her guitars on Craigslist, garage sales and by word of mouth, says she has never spent more than $20 for a guitar. Once she procures the instrument, her mother helps with the fixing of damages and restringing of the instrument. Then Fitzgerald waits for the right person to come along.

“I think people find me somehow,” she says. “I don’t really look for who to give it to. But I won’t say no to anyone. ‘Cause if they come to me and ask for one, and if I have one, I’m supposed to give it to them. I feel like I’m called to do this”

She is aware that not every kid who gets a guitar will find the saving grace of the instrument.

“Some kids are going to play, some kids are not. Some kids are going to use it as a hammer! That doesn’t concern me. It’s a matter of how many [guitars] I can get out to the kids’ hands.”

A fan of Jimi Hendrix, Fitzgerald says she gives out the most guitars on Hendrix’s birthday, Nov. 27. To spread the cheer and awareness about her hero, Fitzgerald has even sought out kids at fast food restaurants to give free guitars.

As Fitzgerald shows the 14-year-old foster kid the various guitars she has collected over the weeks, she chuckles as the boy gravitates toward the biggest one he can find. After helping him adjust the strap and showing him how to use the tuner, she studies the pure delight in the boy’s face.

“It’s a very crucial age where kids can get into drugs or gangs or wrong things,” Fitzgerald says. “And if a kid gets hooked on a guitar, you cannot get away from it.

“I’m a firm believer that music is such a counselor,” she says. Even though she comes from a family of talented musicians, Fitzgerald is not a musician herself. She chuckles as she recounts how she attended vocal lessons as a kid, and was promptly encouraged not to go back.

“I don’t even play anything!” she says. “Not a darn thing. Not even the harmonica. And I still know the power of it [music].”