Lemonade stand raises money to send kids on final fun trip of summer, this year in honor of supporter Craig Chamberlin

Dozens of children attending the Northeast Youth Center in Hillyard lined a busy street corner Friday, waving signs and selling lemonade to raise money for a trip to the Triple Play Family Fun Park in North Idaho.

This is the sixth annual fundraiser to benefit the kids who attend the youth center, said Executive Director Sheila Geraghty.

“It started on the corner with just a table to raise money for the kids to go to Chuck E. Cheese and it’s turned into this,” she said.

During the school year, the center offers after-school care for 95 children who attend six elementary schools in northeast Spokane. During the summer, the center can accept up to 135 children from all over the city. The older children go to Triple Play and the younger children to Chuck E. Cheese. The annual trips have become a ritual that ends the summer program.

On Friday, about a dozen children at a time took turns waving signs at cars driving by. But what really got them excited were the big trucks that drove by regularly.

“Semi! A semi is coming!” a child would call out. As the big rigs approached, the kids would pump their fists up and down in the air, encouraging the semi drivers to blow their horns as they drove past. Many drivers obliged, much to their excitement.

Seven-year-old Ahmad Walker went to Triple Play last year with the center and is excited about going back. He was happy to stand and wave his sign to help raise the money needed for the trip.

“It’s very fun,” he said. “We get to wave signs.”

Eight-year-old Jermaine Luke went to Chuck E. Cheese with the center previously.

“I liked it,” he said. “I got to play with my friends. I got to play games.”

He said he’s most looking forward to what he calls the toilet water slide at Triple Play.

Both original and huckleberry lemonade were on tap. Some drivers simply pulled up, handed a donation out of their window to one of the adults, then drove away without getting a cup of lemonade.

Geraghty said it’s not unusual for the center to receive donations for the trip after the lemonade sale is over.

Last year’s lemonade stand raised $13,000. After the event was held, a donation of $9,000 came in from former Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy Craig Chamberlin.

Chamberlin, who was well-known in the community because of his work as a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, said he wanted to donate the campaign money he had left over from his run for Spokane County Sheriff. Chamberlin died in April.

“It just put us over the top,” Geraghty said of Chamberlin’s donation. “It was a very generous donation from a very generous man. This is in honor of him today.”

It costs $8,000 to take all the children enrolled in the center’s summer program to either Triple Play or Chuck E. Cheese. The extra money donated last year was used to give all the children a back-to-school shopping trip at Target, Geraghty said.

The same will be done this year with any money raised over the $8,000 needed, she said, but she knows they will be unlikely to raise as much as last year.

“We don’t want to be unrealistic,” she said. “We hope to raise $15,000.”