Shane Family Sets Up Web Site So Deeds Done in Daughter’s Name Can Be Recorded

• Hopes ‘Pay It Forward’ Will Become Communitywide

BY ANNE SOBLE

The members of Emily Shane’s immediate family, mother and father Ellen and Michel Shane, and her two older sisters Gerri and Leigh, comforted by relatives and friends, have finished the traditional Judaic days of mourning, or shiva, but Ellen Shane told the Malibu Surfside News this week, “There will never be a day when I won’t think about her loss.”
The mother said the Shane family is focusing its energy on the “pay it forward” memorial being undertaken to honor the daughter who was killed when a speeding car struck her on Pacific Coast Highway near Heathercliff Road on April 3.
“A person does a good deed for someone, then the recipient does a good deed for someone else, and the cycle continues.”
The family has set up a Web site for participants to record their deeds at www.emilyshane.org
Ellen Shane emphasized, “It’s not the extent of a deed, or the amount of a donation, it’s the act that counts.” She hopes people will record all deeds, “however small,” such as “if they welcome someone new to school, sit with someone who seems lonely, help someone who’s struggling with a bag of groceries,” the list goes on.
Shane said, “Our daughter touched so many people, if people reach out to others, it helps toward [building] the kind of world Emily wanted to help bring about.”