Sunil Sethi is a real estate broker in Fremont. For the past four years he has personally delivered dictionaries to every third grader in his school district.
"This is for you to keep, so it will help you in your writing and school work," Sethi said to one student receiving a dictionary.
"I'll use it for editing and publishing in my writings," student Jasmine Chow said.
Teachers also noticed that when the students used the dictionary it encouraged them to read more.
"Mainly by getting definitions and learning how to pronounce the words, how to say them, they also look them up with their peers," teacher David Cole said.
"What I need to know like some new words for vocabularies and know what the meaning is," student Kylie McNamara said.
This year Sethi had a hard time getting some of his colleagues to help him.
"Because of the hard times it was getting harder to get that done, to get the donors and so I said, 'Let's go to the local businesses,'" he said.
Paddy's Coffee, Starbrite Dental and Bank of America came through and Wednesday helped him deliver the goods.
Over 900 dictionaries were successfully delivered to third graders at seven schools in the New Haven Unified School District. The price tag was $1,500 -- some might say it is a priceless investment.
Sethi has good reason for handing out the dictionaries.
"Absolutely because when scores rise, home values rise, crime goes down, the kids do better, the troubled elements go away, it's all positive," Sethi said.
