22 Years, One Yellow VW Bug: The Teacher Search That Ended in 100 Backpacks

Olivia Bean spent 22 years looking for a teacher whose name she never knew. All she had was a memory: living in a motel as a kid, and every afternoon a teacher drove her home, giving her a few minutes where she could just be a kid. When the search finally found Beth Tanner, Tanner was in memory care, her recollections fading, though her love for children and her yellow VW Bug had stayed. She died two days before the reunion they’d planned.

So the people behind the search turned the reunion fund into something else: 100 backpacks for kids in the neighborhood where Tanner once taught. And then the final six backpacks were claimed by exactly six children. Not a coincidence. A continuation.

One commenter wrote the line that says everything:“If you don’t have a Beth, be a Beth.”Most of us have a version of Beth Tanner somewhere in our past, someone whose name we might not even remember, who gave us a few minutes of being a kid. Some of them are still here. Who’s yours — and have you told them?