RUMFORD – A Rumford woman who touched the lives of thousands of people across the nation through her generosity, love and kindness when most needed a helping hand died peacefully early Tuesday morning with her family by her side.

Known far and wide as “Dot” – or “Hugs,” as her license plate read – Dorothy G. Sanchas, 85, was a treasure who will be greatly missed by all, family members and community officials said by phone as news of her passing spread through the area.

Mexico Town Manager John Madigan said Sanchas’ passing would be a great loss to the region.

“She has been a wonderful person. She’s just certainly been a help to the needy in the area and she was well-respected and well-loved by a vast majority of the whole River Valley community for what she’s done with her charity. We’re going to miss her,” Madigan said.

“She was the original ‘Pay It Forward.’ You know, ‘Don’t do for me, do for someone else and pass it on,'” Dot’s daughter Rosemary Russell of Denham Springs, La., said Tuesday evening.

“My husband and I came to see her for three weeks in June when she was in the hospital and a nursing home, and every person who came to take care of her, they’d tell me how Mama took care of them in the past, and now, they were just so proud to be able to help her. I love to hear those stories,” she said.

Sanchas, who was born in Rumford on Nov. 4, 1922, followed in the loving footsteps of her mother, Catherine (Gillis) Gallant, by helping those in need any way she could, according to her youngest son, Jim Sanchas, of Ocklawaha, Fla.

“She was a fantastic woman,” he said. “People talk about her from coast to coast and they wrote letters to Oprah about her.”

“She was a woman that was a saint who walked the earth. She was very compassionate, very loving and she had a very great devotion to St. Martin. He was like a healer,” Margaret McNeal of Rumford said about her mother.

“Years ago, a wife left a man with their three children and he went to a Rumford priest and said he couldn’t raise them and Ma learned of it and found excellent homes for those kids. She was an instrument in many things and it was always about giving and love. If she had $2 in her pocket and you needed it, it was yours. She was definitely a servant of God. She truly was,” she added.

“She always had a hug for everybody. She always had a smile … She was just one of those women who don’t come along very often,” Jim Sanchas said.

In addition to owning and operating a cake-baking business at her Prospect Avenue home, Dot Sanchas taught youngsters there how to shop via her Nutrition Day Camp.

She worked for years as a nutritional aide for the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension system and wrote a weekly column in the Rumford Falls Times titled Kindness Counts. It contained any kindness she’d witness during the week, two recipes, household tips and tips on how to spread kindness.

About a year ago, her rheumatoid arthritis made that impossible, family members said.

“People bought the paper for her article and when it was not in the paper, people called from everywhere to see if she was OK,” Russell said.

Dot Sanchas also founded Santa’s Helpers in the Rumford area in the late 1970s to help provide clothing, gifts and food for those in need.

That spun off another idea for the off-Christmas season called The Free Store. Starting in the back seat of her station wagon, then to her garage and finally into a building in Mexico, it was a place where people could go to get donated necessities for free, Margaret McNeal said.

“She was just a remarkable person. A mother who unconditionally loved all,” McNeal said.

In honor of her mother and grandmother, Dot Sanchas also published a cookbook about 10 years ago called “Good Enough to Share.”

She’s even been written into history books of Rumford and received awards for her humanitarianism.

Right after she died at 3:30 a.m., family members said a vision of Jesus Christ appeared on their mom’s house in the moonlight.

“We were outside all numb and Arthur Meader had just come to get her body and my niece looked up and saw it on the building … It reminded me of Christ at Gethsemane kneeling at the rock. Others said they saw angels at his feet … It was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ It was kind of a cool thing, kind of comforting … and then it started to drizzle and it was like tears from heaven,” Jim Sanchas said.