Mom who baked cookies for school bus riders for 15 years shut down by complaint

Dec. 20, 2013: Anne Tabat holds the now-empty cookie basket which once was her weapon for getting neighbors to know each other in Chanhassen, Minn. Tabat, a mother who has been baking cookies for the kids on her children's bus for 15 years has been shut down by an anonymous complaint. (AP)

CHANHASSEN, Minn. – A Chanhassen mother who has been baking cookies for the kids on her children's bus for 15 years has been shut down by an anonymous complaint.

Every Friday, Anne Tabat has met the school bus in her subdivision with a basket of cookies. It began as a thank you to the bus driver. And, Tabat said, she couldn't give the driver a cookie without giving one to every child on the bus.

Tabat said the cookies were also a way to get to know her neighbors.

"I didn't live in the suburbs until I turned 40," she said. "Look at the way these houses are designed here. They're not designed with a friendly neighborliness community in mind. I haven't been in most of the houses in my neighborhood. People live such busy lives; you don't talk to your neighbors, you don't know your neighbors."

For the first time in many years, Tabat won't be at the bus stop Friday. She received a phone call from the school this week telling her someone had complained and that she should cease and desist the dispensing of cookies. She said she never really had a straight answer about the specifics of the complaint.

"I think it's somebody who just didn't bother to get to know me and I think that's what the sin is here," Tabat told Minnesota Public Radio News.

Tabat has taken it in stride. She's busy making 200 cookies for her neighborhood party Saturday.

"People are good," Tabat said. "I've yet to find someone I can't find commonality with. We're all crawling around on the planet dealing with circumstances in our life, and most of us just want to raise a nice family and be successful in however you define success and for most people it's just surviving."