Don and Kelly Drehoff never knew Carlos Santay-Carillo.

But last year, after they heard that the 19-year-old had been killed during a botched robbery at a Catonsville gas station -- just as he was preparing to take his pregnant wife to the hospital to give birth -- the Oella couple said they felt a tremendous need to help his young widow and newborn son.

"I just felt like I wanted to do something," Kelly Drehoff said. "It was one of those times when you feel strongly compelled to reach out and make a difference."

Ten days later, the Drehoffs did reach out to Claudia Sales and her son, Carlos David, who was born at St. Agnes Hospital in the early morning hours of Mother's Day, May 11, less than 10 hours after his father's murder.

They took Sales, who is from Guatemala and speaks Spanish, and her friend Bertha Anderson, who serves as her translator, out to dinner at the Double T Diner on Rolling Road at Route 40.

There they pledged their support to Sales, who still lives less than a half-mile from the Carroll Fuel gas station on Baltimore National Pike where her husband was killed.

The Drehoffs didn't know where the gesture would take them, or what it would entail. But the impulse was too powerful to ignore, they said.

On April 29, shortly after 10 p.m., the couple welcomed Sales, just off work at the La Quinta Inn, in Jessup, and her now almost 1-year-old son to their home with open arms.

"Come to your godfather," Don Drehoff said to the boy -- clearly happy about Sales' request a few weeks prior that he and his wife be Carlos David's godparents.

Sales, with Anderson and another friend, Nadie Espinoza, at her side, smiled.

The group had gathered at the Drehoffs' historic Oella home to continue planning Carlos David's first birthday party, scheduled for May 16 at the Overhills Mansion, in Catonsville, as a celebration and a fundraising event.

Since the tragic murder almost one year ago, the Drehoffs, Sales and Anderson have been planning the party in hopes the event will spur generosity in the Catonsville community, and help support Sales as she navigates through motherhood without her husband, Don Drehoff said.

In the Drehoffs' spacious kitchen, there was cake and coffee, and everyone took turns holding Carlos David, who his mother calls "Carlitos."

That her son "stays with anybody, as long as he feels secure," Sales said in Spanish, shows he is just like his father, who was trusting and friendly.

Sales said she can already tell little Carlitos walks like his father, though he only just began walking.

He looks like his father did at his age, and is calm and intelligent, like his father was, she said.

When the Drehoffs doted on the boy, she smiled.

The Drehoffs' two daughters, Kaylor, 21, and Mackenzie, 13, smiled at the scene in their kitchen as well.

The couple's son, Zach, 23, is away at college, but Don Drehoff mentioned his name when he noted that it could have been anybody at the gas station that day.

"It could have been me, it could have been you, it could have been Zach," he said.

He told Sales that he wants to baby-sit Carlitos some time, and she smiled.

She said the support she has gotten from the community at large, and from the Drehoffs in particular, was completely unexpected, and she is extremely thankful for it.

Conveying her feelings on the subject, Anderson said, "She can't even find words to say what she feels. People who didn't even know her helped her in a tough time, and because of that, and thanks to that, she and Carlos are doing well."

As the conversation returns to the birthday party, Don Drehoff and Anderson go over details and discuss logistics.

And Carlitos falls asleep in spurts on his mother's shoulder.

Anderson said she hopes the party will help Sales to "remember that out of a sad situation, there is something joyful."

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