When Ellen Cravens volunteered, along with 500 other employees of Deerfield-based Astellas Pharma US Inc., to participate in the company’s annual day of community service, she did not realize, at first, that she would be going home.

Old St. Bart School, part of the South Side Waukegan parish where Cravens, then Ellen Sedar, received the sacraments and learned to read and write, is now a year-round shelter for homeless families,

PADS Lake County’s The Family Center, at 8th and Lincoln streets, is home to 42 people, including eight children between the ages of 1 and 3.

Cravens, of Johnsburg, hadn’t visited her old neighborhood since her dad died in 1990. “It took my breath away,” she said. “As I walked around the school, the memories came back — the May Crowning, and how you wanted to be picked.”

Cravens and about 50 other Astellas employees spent Thursday sweeping, weeding, planting, painting and building flower boxes as well as storage seats and cubby benches for the many children who call the Family Center home. The beautification included the painting of fun, educational, playground games — hopscotch, four square, a map of the U.S. — on the barren patches of asphalt that surround the shelter. Craven helped to create an alphabet tree, where children might throw bottle caps on leaves — each containing a letter of the alphabet — and name a word beginning with that letter.

Karen Walles of Gurnee, who works in Astellas’ Department of Regulatory Affairs, worked stenciling and painting a giant pond scene for the enjoyment of children who likely have never seen a real frog, or turtle or dragonfly.

Walles also shares a tie with the neighborhood. She volunteers twice a month at the Holy Family Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen, which operates out of old St. Bart Church.

“I can’t wait to show the people I volunteer with my lily pad,” she yelled over the din. “And look at my cottontails!”

Inside the shelter, Rickie Coleman, a PADS family advocate, said the volunteers were helping to “keep hope alive.” “They’re giving back,” Coleman said. “They’re showing love.”

Rachel Mathis of Mundelein, who as an employee of Astellas can also use five personal days for community service, looked down at her shoes speckled with paint from a volunteer effort at Lambs Farm in Libertyville.

“It’s one of the great things about Astellas,” Mathis said. “It’s really good to work for a company that cares about the community like that.”

Astellas employees worked at sites around Chicagoland during its Changing Tomorrow Day, including One Hope in Lake Villa and Whittier School in Waukegan.

Masao Yoshida, president and CEO of Astellas, a U.S. affiliate of Tokyo-based Astellas Pharma Inc., said the company considers every community in which it’s located “part of our home.”

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