Photos By Sandra Small Photographer.
La Mesa Chamber members and friends came together on December 6th to celebrate our strength and sense of giving, by collecting and distributing toys to military families living in La Mesa. This project was the creation of local community supporter, Jerry Lester and joined by many business people who saw the unique opportunity to enhance the lives of these military children. Those that joined Jerry and made significant contributions to this new holiday project were: Jon Kirk, owner of Kirk Paving, Smart & Final Extra! Warehouse & Market, Orchard Supply Hardware, Kristie Facto of Kristine Facto State Farm Insurance and Braxton Mahon, General Manager of BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse. This NEW project was coordinated with Lincoln Military Housing who manage the two military sites in La Mesa. Lincoln Military Housing will facilitate a holiday event for our 70 La Mesa military families later this month.
Braxton Mahon and his team of BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse served great salad, pasta and many varieties of pizza that filled the plates of all who attended. Our wine sponsor for the evening, the Riviera Supper Club had great selections for our guests. We send a special thank you to Michael Rammelsberg for always being a partner on so many Chamber events!
We are proud to report that 303 toys, diapers and other items were purchased and donated PRIOR to the evening celebration! With the generous support of our members and guests, 83 toys were brought to the event. making the total collected so far, 386 items for our military families! We have several more donations to collect and add to our total. We will give the FINAL total soon, so stay tuned for our Grand Total for this amazing holiday project!
The winner of the grand raffle prize of the evening was Janet Cunningham of CityMark, who supports many of our events and activities. Congratulations Janet – enjoy!!
The evening was a warm and fun-filled way to close out the year with our members and friends!