Fill the Truck for Special Olympics Saturday

Goodwill will be working with Tuttle Special Olympics Saturday for the annual Fill-The-Truck fundraiser, the largest fundraiser of the year for the local Special Olympics program.

The event will be held from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Saturday at Williams Grocery, located at 302 E. Main Street in Tuttle. Bring unwanted items to the location to be loaded onto trucks by Goodwill’s helpers.

Goodwill will give Tuttle Special Olympics 10 cents per pound for each usable item. Larger items can be picked up prior or following the event by calling (866) 581-7905.

Missy Beets, Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations for Goodwill, said Thursday, April 18, “This is, of course, our annual donation drive that we have that we do every spring with the Tuttle Special Olympics and we always coordinate it with when Tuttle does their city wide garage sale, so it really helps out a lot. This year we are doing it on Saturday, April 27th, and it’s going to be from the same time that we’ve done it in the past, which is 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. If we’re there and people are in line at 4 p.m., we’ll stay until we get them all loaded. We bring plenty of trucks to take all the donations in that day. We’re holding it, again, in the Williams Grocery Store parking lot like we have done in the past.”

While the event will look to continue its successful tradition, there will be one little change.

Mrs. Beets said, “The only thing we’re doing a teeny bit different is, sometimes the day of the event, we get requests to go to people’s houses, especially since they’ve had a garage sale and they have some rather large pieces of furniture, sometimes even some appliances, different things that they want to donate. And because we’ve been so busy in the past with that donation drive in the Tuttle parking lot, we’re going to schedule those home pick-ups for a completely separate day, either before or after the garage sale, because every time one of our trucks leaves to go pick stuff up, it leaves a lot of stuff sitting in the parking lot at Williams, because we don’t have anything to put it in. That’s all kind of described and explained on the flyer, that home pickups will not be available the day of the event. Any time before or after, we will be happy to do home pick-ups, in case they can’t get over to the trucks in Williams parking lot with their big items. And of course, it still benefits the Tuttle Special Olympics.”

The Special Olympics volunteers and athletes will also be there to help with the fundraiser.

Mrs. Beets said, “Donna McKinney, who runs that group for the school there, she’ll be out there. I believe each year they have a bake sale in the Williams parking lot to raise additional funds. We’ll just all be out there for seven hours, taking in donations and it’s usually a pretty busy day.”