Vada Fiegler of Holly Springs used to play a mean piano. Now, she thinks, she's too old or too busy to elicit beautiful sounds from it the way she once did.

"My husband fusses at me all the time because I don't sit down and play," Fiegler said.

Her piano still has lots of good music in it, though, she said.

That's why she called Kim Masuca to see whether she wanted the piano for her son, Jordan.

Fiegler, 60, isn't the only one. After I wrote last week about Masuca's efforts to find a piano for her autistic son, who has displayed an affinity for music, scores of Triangle residents have written or called her, classical music station WCPE or me to offer new and used pianos.

Jordan is a rambunctious 9-year-old -- aren't they all? -- who, his mother said, inhabits a world that only he can understand. Until, that is, he sits down at a piano. That's just about the only time he is calm and focused, she said.

Masuca, a single mother, was overwhelmed by the response, but also leery. With good reason: When she began looking for a piano last year, she went to a piano store where she was befriended by a man she met in the store.

"He told me I could pay him $50 a month until it was paid for," she recounted. After four payments, she returned to make another one, but the helpful gent wasn't there. Turns out he was just a customer.

Fortunately for her, all of the good Samaritans who have offered to help her son nurture his talents really are good.

When I spoke with her Wednesday, she said she has been offered 22 pianos. Curtis Brothers, outreach director for WCPE, said the station received offers of 25 after talking about Jordan on the air.

One caller, Curtis Dixon, is scheduled to meet with Masuca today at a Capital Boulevard piano store to pick out a new piano for Jordan.

Brothers of WCPE joked, "We have a horrible 'problem' of where we can store them. ... We need movers and volunteers with climate-controlled storage space. Their services could be donated as a tax write-off."

I could have told him -- and Masuca when she said the first calls offering pianos started before 7 a.m. -- that you guys are less concerned with tax write-offs than with helping people in need.

Every time you're called upon from this space to help those in need, you respond. Not even I, someone who is used to readers' generosity, was expecting nearly 50 pianos.

Disc jockeys at WCPE, including Deana Vassar, were unaware that their station is the only one Jordan listens to.

Masuca told me last week that Jordan objected when she tried to interest him in other stations. "He said, 'That's not music.' "

She no longer changes stations. She has, however, changed her answering machine to let people know that, although Jordan has a piano, she is trying to help get some to other children.

Kelly Stone, recreation therapist for the Autism Society of North Carolina, told me, "We have a music therapist. I know they've been using a pretty old piano, so I'm sure they could use one."

If you have space to store pianos or know some child who would benefit from one, call Brothers or Vassar of WCPE at curtis@theclassicalstation.org.