Group chimes in with modest gifts for Tech

Andrea Rojas and about 30 other Virginia Tech students spent two hours Sunday hunting for creative, unlikely spots to hang 300 sets of hand-painted ceramic bells -- Ben's Bells.

And they can't wait for you to have them.

"When we hear the stories of people who actually find them, that's when it'll mean something," Rojas said.

Ben's Bells is a Tucson, Ariz.-based nonprofit group that aims to bring kindness and hope to people hit by tragedy.

Jeannette Maré-Packard started the organization as a coping mechanism after her son, Ben, died suddenly in 2002.

"There's this massive tragedy thing to me where people want to back off and don't know what to say," said Maré-Packard, who serves as executive director of the nonprofit.

But, she said, "the support I got saved me."

Now she tries to return that support.

Twice a year, the nonprofit creates bells for her own community of Tucson and parts of the nation, as a way to give back.

Each section of the four-piece bell sets is made by a different person.

A finished bell is typically touched by 10 sets of hands, with some of the work done in the Tucson studio and other work completed in prisons or elsewhere, Maré-Packard said.

The bells in Blacksburg this week are part of that message: that random acts of kindness can help.