For the second year, a DuBois book store is collecting “chemo caps” for patients at the Hahne Cancer Center. We spoke with a cancer survivor about how the caps helped her.

Jean Vandervort of Brockway says she’d actually knitted a couple of chemo caps before.

Then, she needed one of her own. Diagnosed with ovarian cancer last summer, she was told she had three months to live. Surgery and chemotherapy saved her life, but the chemo also altered her appearance.

“That’s a part of you that when you lose your hair, I think you lose a little part of you,” says Vandervort. “With the cap on, it gave you a little more confidence.”

“It’s very cold for them, especially the ladies don’t like to go out. Some of them don’t like to wear the wigs, they don’t like to wear scarves,” says Rosie’s Book Shoppe owner Sherry Okonski.

Okonski says a yarn shop that closed used to hold the cap drive, and with the cause being close to her heart, she picked it up.

“My mother lost two sisters a month and four days apart, two years ago, and I wanted to do something in their memory,” says Okonski.

While their main thing is caps, organizers say it can get cool in the chemo room at the hospital, so a few knitters have also been making slippers and scarves.

“The back of your neck gets cold, so a scarf is nice,” says Vandervort.

Vandervort says she got a wig, but it wasn’t for her, so she wore a cap. As her hair started to re-grow over nine months, a woman in church spoke to her.

“She said, ‘You need to take that cap off and be proud of who you are.’ I did, I took it off that day at church and did not put it back on,” says Vandervort.

Organizers say between the book shop and Amy’s Yarn Boutique, located inside the Miller Brothers Furniture store, more than 500 caps have come in this fall. Men or women can wear them.

“People are so generous. We’ve had people that just come in and they’ll stay up all weekend just making chemo hats,” says store owner Pam Miller.

“I have a voracious knitter that’s done over 300,” says Okonski.

For her part, Vandervort says she even knitted caps during her 9-hour stays in the chemo area.

“I always carry my bag no matter where I go. I take my knitting bag with me, and yes, I knitted up there,” says Vandervort.

It’s her way of giving back and helping people.

“I love it when I’m in the grocery store and someone comes in and has one on, to think that we helped somebody go through that terrible time in their lives. I think it’s a dose of love,” says Okonski.

Caps will be continue to be collected through the winter.