Students pitch in for Shasta
Aspen Stam dipped strawberries in chocolate. Byron Jarnes peddled candy bars. Tyler Opp gave up two weeks’ worth of allowance.
The reason: “For Shasta,” said 8-year-old Tyler, a third-grade student at Lake City Junior Academy.
The Coeur d’Alene school lent students $10 apiece last month in a creative fundraiser to provide a house for Shasta Groene, the sole survivor of one of the area’s most publicized crimes. The students were instructed to multiply the loans by soliciting donations or through other creative means.
During an energy-charged school assembly Wednesday morning, 80 students in first through 10th grades turned in the money they earned and shared stories of washing cars, hawking golf balls, baking goodies, doing yard work and finagling donations from friends and relatives.
“There are some of you here who have gone beyond my wildest imagination,” Principal Ron Turner told the group. “I’m so excited to see the creativeness of our students. That’s just special.”
First-grader Karson Peach thrust his hands in the air in a rock-star pose after giving an envelope with $131 to his principal.
“I called my mom’s friends,” 7-year-old Karson said, to whoops of laughter and clapping from his classmates.
Two anonymous donors gave a total of $800 to the school for the fundraiser, Turner said. As of Wednesday afternoon, the school nearly quadrupled the donation with more than $3,000 raised by the students. More was expected to trickle in during the rest of the week, Turner said.
“We were so pumped,” Turner said. “We want these kids to learn to give and to share with the community.”
The Seventh-Day Adventist school will donate the money to the Windermere Foundation’s Shasta Groene Trust, set up to build a 1,300-square foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home. It will be held in a trust for the girl, now 10, until she turns 25.
The girl was 8 when she and her 9-year-old brother, Dylan, were kidnapped from their home in Wolf Lodge Bay after Joseph Duncan murdered their older brother, mother and mother’s boyfriend in May 2005. Dylan’s remains were found in a remote campground in the Montana wilderness.
Many in the community are raising funds to pay for the home and the lot it sits on. The project is expected to be furnished and ready for Shasta to move into by July.
Lake City Junior Academy third-grader Byron Jarnes sold candy bars because “I figured they needed the money,” he said of the Groene family. He raised $149.
How many treats does that buy?
“I don’t know. I sold a lot,” said Byron, 9.
Rylee Clark, 12, baked and sold brownies for a total of $125.
“I like cooking things,” Rylee said. She bargain-shopped for brownie mix, reinvested her profits and ended up with a dozen batches of brownies. She sold the desserts for 50 cents each or $10 a batch.
The sixth-grader met Shasta at a summer camp a few years ago, making the fundraiser more personal, she said.
“I decided I would earn a whole bunch of money,” Rylee said. “It sounded like a fun thing to do, and I wanted to help.”