By Mary Stewart | The Selma Times-Journal

The Selma Rocks craze has just begun, and the group already has plans to grow.

Selma Rocks is an organization that hides creatively painted rocks all around the city for both tourists and locals to find.

Marie Mahan and her daughter Deanna have a personal connection to rock painting.

“Well, we started painting rocks back in 2009. I went to my son’s grave and someone had painted a rock and left it on his grave and that got me started painting rocks,” she said.

Another woman on the Selma Rocks team, Cindy Anderson, said she found a rock while going through a tough time and considered it a blessing.

“Well personally, I live in Selma, but I work in Prattville. Prattville has the Prattville rocks going on there, and I was unaware of what’s going on back in during Christmas time,” she explained. “I found a rock in Prattville after the Christmas Parade was over. When I found that rock that somebody had put out I was like ‘oh that’s such a blessing’.”

Trea Newsome had the idea to form a group to hide the rocks around town, and Selma Rocks was created.

“He is awesome. If it wasn’t for him our group wouldn’t have gotten together,” Mahan said.

There are now five women involved and one man in the rock painting and hiding team.

“A lot of us women were painting rocks and putting them out, but we all thought we were the only ones,” she said.

“We didn’t think it was going to go anywhere,” she said. “We just thought it was going to be a group of women, painting rocks and putting them out and then all of sudden it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Mary Hodo, who is new to rock painting, loves working the Selma Rocks because it allows her to better the community.

“One of my biggest passions in life is to better this community,” she said. “Just anything that I can do to better this community is something that makes me feel good, and, hopefully, that even if it could reach one person will make a huge difference.”

Cindy considers herself to be that “one person” for Prattville Rocks and hopes to help people in Selma.

“If you think about it, it’s something so simple; the sweetest gesture,” Anderson said. “You never know who is going to find a rock, you never know who might need it at that time.”

The ladies said they would love to have more community involvement, and if people would like to get in touch with them to find “Selma Rocks” on Facebook.

“We are thrilled beyond belief, and the more people that can get involved the better,” Hodo explained. “The more inspiration and hope that this can bring to the community in a unique and fun way, the better.”