It’s a touching story of what can happen when a community comes together.
When Krista Tellier’s four-year-old son Caden was diagnosed with leukemia just after Christmas, her friends began organizing a small fundraiser to help the family cover some of the additional costs of Caden’s treatment.
However, the event grew into something much larger than anyone anticipated and on March 8th, Caden’s benefit raised $22,000.
“It is pretty impressive,” said Stacey McTrowe, a friend of the Telliers and one of the event’s organizers.
She added that even though Krista had seen the small fundraiser her friends had planned grow into the much larger event, what the night accomplished still surpassed her expectations.
“It’s way more than what I thought for sure,” added Krista.
“To be perfectly honest, it’s just really overwhelming, it turned out so well.”
People poured in with donations and offers to help raise money. Kids donated money earned shoveling snow, tons of donations were received for silent auction and raffle prizes and people were very generations when bidding on items, said McTrowe.
Before the event, McTrowe said both her and fellow organizer Aimee Robinson were a bit worried of how the event would be received.
In the end though, the event was very well received, there were more than enough prizes and items to go around and not too much left over.
McTrowe went on to say that everything came together well for the event to be a success.
Volunteers showed up the day of the event to help, the entertainment was fantastic and so was the venue.
“I was so pleased,” said McTrowe.
She added that the event ran from 6-11 p.m. on Saturday, so the $22,000 was raised in just five hours.
“I thought it went really well,” added Krista. She went on to say that her friends and the staff at Leto’s did a fantastic job of organizing and running the event.
McTrowe said it was clear to her that Krista was overwhelmed and also extremely grateful for the support.
Krista said she is very thankful for what the people of Lacombe have done for her family and she is happy to be a part of such an amazing community.
“I just think that Lacombe did an awesome job of supporting someone in their community,” said Krista.
“I don’t know if other communities would have pulled through as much as Lacombe did. Everyone here is just really awesome.”
“I’m really happy we ended up here.”
“I think everything works out for a reason and I think we ended up here for a reason.”