The local plant collected 90 items to raffle off to their employees. Among the items were three motel stays, $50 in cash, a day off with pay from Stearns and gift certificates from businesses in Cold Spring, Richmond, Paynesville, St. Cloud, and Willmar.
This is the second year Stearns Manufacturing has been involved with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the first year of involvement for the Paynesville plant. Other fund raising efforts at all four plants combined have included: shirt sales, spaghetti dinner, creating and selling cookbooks, etc.
Over $12,000 has been raised, and four wishes have been granted from the funds raised by Stearns employees for Make-A-Wish. All the funds are being used to make wishes come true for youth in central Minnesota. Receiving their wishes thus far was a 17-year-old girl with Cystic Fibrosis who wanted a computer; a 15-year-old girl suffering from lymphoma whose wish was a trip to Disney World. A third gift went to a boy who wanted a Rainbow Monster Castle II set up in his back yard, and the fourth wish will be granted to a seven-year-old boy with a brain tumor who wishes to go to Disney World.
Make-A-Wish Foundation of Minnesota is dedicated to the purpose of granting wishes to children under the age of 18 years who are suffering from a terminal illness or from a medical condition sufficiently life threatening to create a probability that the child will not survive beyond his or her 18th birthday. Since 1982, every child who has qualified for a wish has been granted the wish, and this amounts to 1,370 wishes.