Even in death, Tom Stefani is still inspiring good deeds.

Playground equipment will soon be on its way to Afghanistan to provide a place for local children to play, completing a project Stefani initiated before he was killed in the Middle East.

Meadow Vista’s Stefani was working as a volunteer foreign agricultural adviser to help farmers in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, when a deadly roadside explosion impacted his convoy on Oct. 4, 2007.

Now his parents are carrying out his wishes to help the Afghan people.

Steve and Barbara Stefani and community volunteers have dismantled playground equipment from Placer Hills School and the former site of the Placer County Children’s Receiving Home and will ship it to Afghanistan.

“When he came home last July, we talked about what can we do here to do something over there,” Barbara Stefani said Monday.

In August, Tom Stefani wandered into an orphanage where the children only had a damaged metal slide with a hole in the center and a wooden pole that once held swings. He e-mailed his parents about conditions at the orphanage.

“He said, ‘If you haven’t done anything, do something for the orphanage,’” Barbara Stefani said.

Placer Hills School, which closed in 2006, was ready to scrap its playground equipment when Steve Stefani inquired about having it donated to the orphanage, said Fred Adam, superintendent for the Placer Hills Union School District.

“We think it’s such a terrific thing, to get rid of our play structure but have some part of the world get to benefit from it,” he said.

The equipment was installed in 1998 and no longer met state and federal safety codes, Adam said. Despite this, the play structure is much more safe than the current one at the orphanage. The play structure company even donated parts to help reinstall it safely, Adam said.

The equipment was already a part of Tom Stefani’s legacy — he helped install it at Placer Hills as a member of Boy Scout Troop 6 in high school.

Other members of the community helped dismantle the equipment on May 31, including members of the Meadow Vista Lions Club, Boy Scout Troop 6 in Meadow Vista and members from the Placer County 4-H.

The Stefanis have been working with the State Department, Department of Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development to transport the equipment to Afghanistan, where military personnel will install it at the orphanage and a city park.

The equipment will be crated and flown on a space-available basis from Travis Air Force Base.

Barbara Stefani said the project is part of making Tom’s dream a reality.

“It’s something that had to be done,” she said. “This is what he wanted and it was my job to make sure it got done. That’s what he wanted and it was the least we could do.”

The Journal’s Michelle Miller-Carl can be reached at michellem@goldcountrymedia.com, or post a comment at AuburnJournal.com.