Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Hostess Sarah Sanzo (left) greets regulars Cleo and Jim Trott on Monday at the Olive Garden restaurant near Valley View Mall in Roanoke. If you're a regular there, you know the short, silver-maned "little Italian lady" well. In her unmistakable accent, she can explain the menu better than the chefs.

Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Sarah Sanzo seats Jennifer and David Kincaid and their two children for lunch Monday at the Olive Garden restaurant near Valley View Mall. Sanzo leaves for Italy on Wednesday to be with her dying father.

Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

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Let's take a break today from bad or bizarre news and focus instead on a little bit of heartwarming good stuff.

It's about a good deed by some fellow employees and a restaurant chain for one of their own, someone confronting the impending death of a loved one and a longing for a faraway home.

The restaurant in question is the Olive Garden near Valley View Mall. The company is Darden Restaurants of Orlando, Fla., a Fortune 500 corporation that calls itself the largest full-service restaurant company in the world.

And the employee is Sarah Sanzo, 62, a part-time hostess and greeter at the chain's Valley View location.

If you're a regular there, you know the short, silver-maned "little Italian lady" well. That's what regulars call her, even though she's from Sicily. Some customers probably believe she owns the place.

Sarah hugs the restaurant's regulars. She fusses over babies and seems to remember every child's name. In her unmistakable accent, she can explain the menu better than the chefs. She's worked there since 1994.

"When she's not there guests are always asking 'Where's the little Italian lady?' " says Jane Gabrielle, who also works at Olive Garden.

Sarah has been married 42 years and is a mother of five and a grandmother of six. She came to America from Sicily in 1967 to marry Anthony Sanzo.

He's a self-employed contractor from Italy, who already lived here. Their introduction was arranged through mutual acquaintances from church, and that's how Sarah wound up coming to America.

They moved here from New York in 1983 and live in Northwest Roanoke.

Other members of Sarah's family are still in the old country, including her father, Joseph Colletti, a retired farmer who's 96 and lives with his son outside Florence.

Sarah battled cancer three years ago, which left her with a lot of medical bills. "I got a million," she says.

Those are partly why she's working at Olive Garden. And because of an economic slowdown that's happening just about everywhere, her hours have been curtailed, like most of Olive Garden's other workers.

Here is where the sadness and longing comes in: Sarah's father is dying, and she couldn't afford the trip home.

Sarah's mother died 20 years ago, after an illness Sarah didn't even know about. "She didn't want me to know she was so sick," Sarah said. Her sister in Italy called her after her mom died. Sarah didn't have time to arrange a trip there before the funeral.

To this day, some Olive Garden colleagues choke up as they describe how heartbroken Sarah has felt about that for years. Hostess Susan Sublett is one of them.

"That's why she wants to go be with her daddy," says Sublett. "They're real family-type people."

This time around, Sarah is going to be at her dad's bedside.

Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden, Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse and some other chains, has an employee benefit program called Darden Dimes.

It's a like a self-funded relief pool. Half of it comes from voluntary payroll deductions by Darden workers. The other half comes from the company, which matches employees' contributions.

It's for family emergencies, such as when a house burns down or a loved one dies.

The fund was there when Hurricane Katrina destroyed two of the chain's restaurants in New Orleans and threw scores of its employees out of work, says Mark Passeretti, the Valley View Olive Garden general manager. "They gave away a couple million dollars back then," he said.

The good news today is that Sarah already has her plane ticket and leaves Wednesday to see her dad.

The dimes fund has helped cover her travel, but it won't necessarily cover all of Sarah's lost income for the three weeks she'll be gone or some other travel expenses.

So, "we're trying to get up enough to cover the money she's not going to be making," Sublett says. There are those cancer surgery bills still to pay, after all.

(Contributions from customers at the restaurant are greatly appreciated, though it was unclear if Darden would also match those, because a company spokesman did not return my phone call).

It seems so simple. People pitching in to help others they care for. No government bailout or handout. Uncomplicated but pretty profound.

Isn't it nice when folks come together around one of their own?