At Water Spring Elementary School, crossing guard Kathie McDaniel does more than usher students across the street.
Each morning and afternoon, she waves happily at parents and children. She compliments their Stanley Cup water bottles, offers encouragement before standardized tests and even sweeps the sidewalk.
When Kristen Zawada runs to pick up her third grader from school on busy work days, knowing she’s going to run into McDaniel “changes everything” about her mood, she said. That’s a sentiment shared by other families, too.
“She’s a joy to talk to,” Zawada said. “She came to open house for meet the teacher before school started, and every parent was pulling her in every direction, like, ‘Hi, Kathie!’”
Crossing guard Kathie McDaniel helps Water Springs Elementary School students and parents cross Water Springs Blvd. in Winter Garden shortly after class dismissal on Aug. 18, 2025. (Rich Pope/O
So when McDaniels fell behind on car payments this month and lost her car, Zawada and her husband, Steve Zawada, launched a GoFundMe to help “Mrs. Kathie” afford a new vehicle and travel to work safely.
The fundraiser has a goal of $6,500 to help McDaniel purchase a used vehicle and fund maintenance and repairs. As of Monday, over 120 people have chipped in — bringing the total raised to about $4,300.
McDaniel is currently borrowing her son’s Mitsubishi to get to the school in Horizon West, a suburban development in southwest Orange. But the car has over 200,000 miles on it and the air conditioner doesn’t work, which is problematic as McDaniel spends hours at a time standing in the sun each weekday.
She had no idea the parents had created the GoFundMe until Steve Zawada told her one day at school — after the fundraiser had already been launched.
Touched to see the community “rally” around her, McDaniel emphasized she didn’t need a Porsche, just a reliable car with working air conditioning to get her to her job, the grocery store and church.
McDaniel said she treats each of the students like her own children, and she hates to see anything get in the way of her drive to Water Spring.
“Even if I’m sick and I feel bad, I drag myself to work and then drag myself back home,” she said. “Because I’m like, ‘No, my kid’s not gonna get run over.’ Because you’re mine while you’re here.”
Last spring, parents at Water Spring Elementary and the adjacent Water Spring Middle School launched a similar drive to help their crossing guard afford time off from work following her husband’s and mother’s deaths, which occurred just two weeks apart in March.
They successfully raised over $5,000 in just 24 hours, giving McDaniel enough money to step back from crossing guard duties and focus on grieving and setting her affairs in order.
Steve Zawada launched this year’s GoFundMe after overhearing McDaniel tell someone about her transportation problem. He hadn’t been involved in last year’s fundraiser, but he’d read about it online. This month, he realized he had the chance to rally the community around McDaniel once more.
He and his wife were excited but not surprised to see the donations pour in.
“On the second day of school, she was sweeping the corner of the area where she stands,” Steve Zawada said. “She didn’t have to do that … but she took her own broom and dust pen, and she was cleaning the corner so kids didn’t slip on the dirt piles when riding their bikes and scooters.”
McDaniel makes a positive impact on each student she greets, agreed Stacey Heidt as she walked her 9-year-old son to his first week in fourth grade on Friday.
“She talks to pretty much everybody — always waving, always in a good mood,” she said.
This will be McDaniel’s fourth year as a crossing guard at Water Spring. But in just a short time, she’s gained near-celebrity status among teachers and families.
Crossing guard Kathie McDaniel helps Water Springs Elementary School students and parents cross Water Springs Blvd. in Winter Garden shortly after class dismissal on Aug. 18, 2025. (Rich Pope/O
McDaniel, 70, worked for Walt Disney World for 20 years before retiring. Her son and 9-year-old twin grandchildren live with her, and she helps support them on her Orange County crossing guard salary of $17.31 per hour, paid by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
Wearing a cooling fan around her neck — a gift from a parent — and a large-brimmed straw hat to protect her from the 95-degree day, McDaniel grew choked up reflecting on the connections she’s formed with her students and the lessons she’s tried to teach them.
“Just be kind to one another,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears under her glittering blue eyeshadow. “Jesus said we were to love one another as He loved us. And that’s what I try to do.”
