Auction Planned To Benefit Boy Hurt By Train Brian Judge Won’T Be Able To Leave The Hospital For Another Month

Tue., Feb. 8, 2000

By Tracy Ellig tracye@spokesman.com

For Valentine’s Day, 11-year-old Brian Judge wants to go to a roller-skating party with his classmates, according to his grandmother.

“They invited him and told him they’d push his wheelchair around the rink,” Pat Judge said Monday.

Brian Judge lost most of his right arm and a portion of his right leg on Jan. 14 after he was snagged by a moving boxcar that he touched.

He’s been in Deaconess Medical Center and Shriners Hospital since the accident.

“Doctors think it will be a month before he can come home,” Pat Judge said. “He seems to be in a good mood, though. He’s tooling around the hospital in his wheelchair like he owns the place.”

While Judge deals with his injuries, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Spokane County is working to deal with his medical bills.

This Sunday, the organization is hosting a fund-raising concert and auction for Judge at Players and Spectators in the Valley. Judge has been matched with Big Brothers for more than two years.

With the fund raiser just days away, the organization is in special need of donated items to auction for the boy. All proceeds go to pay his medical bills.

The concert runs from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Items will be auctioned between sets. The bands are: Bottom Fish, Cronkites, Kelly Hughes, Out West, Snakes, and Steve Starkey & Friends. Men In The Making will have the last set at 8:30 p.m.

No admission will be charged for the concert. Donations will be accepted and Players and Spectators will donate a percentage of their sales that day.

Items for the auction can be donated to the Big Brothers office at 222 W. Mission, Suite 210 in Spokane, (phone: 328-8310) or at the Coeur d’Alene office at 923 Sherman Ave., Suite 100 (phone: 208-667-0975).

Donations can also be made directly to any Global Federal Credit Union branch office or mailed to The Help Fund, c/o Global Federal Credit Union, P.O. Box 3200, Spokane, WA 99220-3200. Please note the account number - 303816 - on any checks.

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