In April 2026 Rhenda Strub had an extra seat at the ballpark and nobody to put in it. Strub is 70 and has lived in Olympia, Washington, since the early 2000s. She had signed up for Seattle Mariners season tickets that spring and drawn two field-level seats near first base, a couple of rows back from the foul line.
Her children and the rest of her family are usually busy. Her husband hates crowds. That left the second seat open for a whole season.
Strub had been a baseball fan for years, but her interest in the Mariners deepened in 2023. Her 27-year-old son Wyatt died that March after muscular dystrophy weakened his heart beyond repair. She told KOMO News that when she lost him she did not want to come out of her room, that she stayed there and watched baseball, and that baseball helped her heal.
For three years she watched every Mariners game on television. On the anniversary of Wyatt’s death in March 2026 she decided she was going to rejoin the world and enjoy it at the ballpark. Then she bought the tickets.
So she posted the spare seat in a Mariners fan group on Facebook. She wrote that she would sell the ticket at her cost, an average of $71, that the seats were near first base, and that she was a 70-year-old grandma from Olympia. The other person could be any age, from anywhere. If they lived between Olympia and T-Mobile Park, she would pick them up on the way.
Within a little over 12 hours the post had more than 4,500 reactions and hundreds of comments. Strub said people connected with the idea of a grandma at the ball game, and that many of them wrote to say they needed a grandma, or wanted one, or would be her grandchild.
One of the people who answered was Joan Staples-Morin, 83, of Tacoma. She said the post looked like a long shot to her, and she put in for it anyway.
When I saw her post, I thought, well, it’s a long shot, but I’m going to put it in.
Strub contacted her. Staples-Morin said she was happy to have found somebody she could go with and just enjoy, and that in conversation it turned out the two of them had a lot in common. They said they clicked right away.
Staples-Morin is Native American and has lived in western Washington since 1960, after moving from Minnesota. She lost her husband three years ago. She said finding someone her own age to go anyplace with had been her struggle. In the fall of 2025 she made a four-hour round trip on her own to one of the last Mariners home playoff games.
Strub joked that she would not mind taking Joan to every game this season. She said she plans to get to at least 65 or 70 of them.
The offer was made out loud
Nobody in this story was short of something they needed. Strub had one seat more than she could use, and she sold it at what it cost her, about $71. Staples-Morin was not in difficulty either. She wanted somebody to go to a game with.
What made it work is that the offer was made out loud, in a place where strangers could see it. Strub did not ask around her own circle, which was busy. She put the seat in front of people she had never met and said any age, anywhere. Staples-Morin read it and answered. That is the same shape as the exchange that started MeetaNeed, where a mother posted on a forum that she had nothing to wear to a ball at West Point and another mother replied that she had a red dress to lend.
Most of what people have to give is this ordinary. A spare seat, a spare hour, a thing that is already sitting there. It tends to stay put because there is no room where the person with the extra and the person who could use it are both standing. The Gifts side of MeetaNeed is built for that kind of surplus.
Where this story comes from
Originally reported by KOMO News in Seattle, Washington, written by Tyler Cunnington and published April 13, 2026. Retold here with the details as that report gives them.
