A pleasant surprise landed at Aldergrove’s Valley Therapeutic Equestrian Association on Tuesday, Dec. 5, – a bigger-than-expected cheque from the Good Times Cruise-In charity car show.
VTEA director Tim Konkin was delighted.
“We really appreciate it this time of year,” Konkin commented, “especially catching up from the COVID years. It’s been more than welcome to receive such a generous donation.”
The exact amount was not disclosed.
It is the 40th year of the association, which offers therapeutic horse riding for special needs riders.
Cruise-In raised a record amount for local charities this year, more than $93,000, according to president Riccardo Sestito, who said it was the result of a high turn-out for the Aldergrove event, combined with an increase in registration fees and souvenir sales along with cost-cutting.
So far, 22 organizations have shared $83,500 in time for Christmas, with more organizations to be added, and another $10,000 to be distributed.
Besides the VTEA, beneficiaries include the Rotary Starfish program in Langley and Aldergrove, Aldergrove-based Langley Meals on Wheels, Ishtar Women’s Resource Society and the Douglas Park Community School Society and Parkside Elementary School Society.
Sestito described his reaction to learning how much was raised as “overwhelmed, like holy cow, like it’s weird to say, ‘hey, we got more money’.”
“The past couple years, we’re scraping pennies together and trying to find a way to do this cheaper, trying to find a way to do that cheaper,” Sestito told the Langley Advance Times on Sunday, Dec. 3 after the all-volunteer charity car show announced the fundraising record.
“I guess all the years of scrimping and savings, finally, we’ve dialed it so tight now, that we get more money to give away.”
The increase in the registration fee, by $5 also helped, Sestito said, along with “our T-shirt sales and all that kind of stuff. We increased the volume there. We pretty much sold out of all our souvenirs and things because we increased the volume this year as well.”
Any left-over souvenir “stragglers” were sold off the next day at the Cruise-In swap meet, Sestito explained.
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Sestito said after the size of the donations was established, contributions to the existing charities supported by the annual show were raised, and new organizations have been added.
“What we’ve done, is we went back and then started increasing them – and increasing them and increasing them,” Sestito told the Langley Advance Times.
“We went through our budget and we said, okay now, we have so much more money, let’s go back and let’s increase all these different charities [amounts].”
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He issued a “special thanks to all the directors and all their spouses, all of the volunteers, and the community [and] the car owners for coming out.”
On Wednesday, Dec. 6, the Cruise-In board of directors was set to meet to start preparing for next year’s event, beginning with appointing a new board.
“We all have to resign,” Sestito said, “then we all have to say, are you coming back?”