4th Annual Country Road Rally
Organized By: Cruisin For Heroes
Stafford, VirginiaSaturday, May 19, 2012
Cruisin For Heroes has been planning this event since last November and through the winter we finalized some details and on February 24, 2012 we sent the ad to the two sites most people go to when they check for events; http://www.carclubcouncil.com/cal.html and http://www.capitalcruisin.com/shows.html We settled on the date of May 19 because it was at the end of National Police Week and our charity was connected with NPW. And when we put it up on the net there was nothing else scheduled that day….should work.
So we planned to run a Rally for a law enforcement group and since I’m usually on the other end of the pointy finger with most law enforcement so I decided to ask advice from our sage of Law Enforcement. He recommended a group called C.O.P.S…..Concerns Of Police Survivors; http://www.nationalcops.org/ We investigated the group and felt it would be a perfect fit for how we operate.
We spent the next 3 months setting up the Rally! For those of you that haven’t been on one of our Rally’s, they are something like a poker run. But we do it a little different….we have something interesting at each stop so the participants can spend some time checking out what is going on at the stop….that time is figured in the whole event. Like a poker run each person has purchased one or more ‘Rally’ cards and when they arrive at each stop they draw a playing card from a bag and it is recorded on the ‘Rally’ card. At the end of the day, at the last stop they draw the fifth card and the poker hand is complete and whoever has the highest hand wins ½ the proceeds from sale of the Rally cards. In years past we have had Rallies of 150 miles or so….this year we decided to keep it less than 50 miles because of the price of gas and we wanted to cater to the local car crowd and give them an opportunity to participate.
We had enthusiastic assistance from Stafford County Sheriff’s office, Rappahannock Regional Criminal Justice Academy, Virginia State Police Area 5 office, 610 Cruisers and Home Depot in N. Stafford. We had enlisted the participation of some C.O.P.S. representatives and they came through with a passionate presence at our event.
The event began at 11AM and ended promptly at 6PM. We raised $325 for C.O.P.S. The sale of the rally cards was $230 so ½ was given to Darryl who had the highest hand, two pair. Some had donated beyond the Rally sale so we had $210 to give to C.O.P.S. But Darryl decided to give his winnings to C.O.P.S.! So we wrote the big check for $325!!!! Ron made an announcement about the C.O.P.S. group to the cruisers that didn’t participate that they could make donations to C.O.P.S. and another $80 was raised! Beyond the money that was raised I think we raised the awareness of C.O.P.S. on Saturday….which is one of the things we try to do with our events.
We sat around and talked with our friends at the cruise then motored home when the adrenalin stopped pumping and I started to slow way down….these events are really stressful for me and when I wind down I really wind down!