By LAURA COPELAND
A beat-up doll sits on a shelf in the back of Annette Marcum's office in Ben Lomond -- motivation for the senior during the 14-hour days she often works in December.
As a poverty-stricken 7-year-old, Marcum received a damaged doll from a charity similar to the one she runs today. Her mother repaired the doll's missing leg with an old sock, washed its dirty hair and put a bandage over its eye.
"She handed it to me and said, You have to take extra care of this doll because she's really sick,'" Marcum recalls. The moment pushed Marcum to become a foster mother and lifelong volunteer, beginning with writing letters for the blind and selling poppies to benefit war veterans.
The 71-year-old hasn't taken a day off since September -- nor has she ever collected a paycheck since she founded Valley Churches United Missions in 1985. Her year-round charity pairs needy children with new, personalized Christmas gifts.
Marcum puts Angelina Jolie to shame with her medley of 10 children, nine adopted. Out of the five special needs children she took care of, two are developmentally disabled and continue to require her care.
A photo of Marcum shows her grinning wildly in Jamaica -- a hint at a life outside the long shifts and loads of laundry. Marcum's late husband, whom she met when he was an usher at their church, "took the kids on as his own" but still insisted the couple take an annual two-week vacation by themselves.
The Irish woman loves dancing
"I don't like to sit at home and watch television," says Marcum, who quit high school as a sophomore to start working at a bookkeeping firm.
She's "too Irish to handle the bureaucracy" of receiving government funds, so she operates her nonprofit solely on donations. Her grassroots response to the Loma Prieta earthquake earned her a FEMA award in 1989. She keeps exhaustive scrapbooks that chronicle the hundreds of news articles and letters mentioning her work; the most recent is from Rep. Anna Eshoo.
Marcum's disaster preparedness came in especially handy when a friend -- a Vietnamese refugee whose journey to America was sponsored by Marcum -- went into labor. Marcum attempted to drive the woman to Stanford hospital, eventually pulling over on the freeway to assist in the baby's delivery.