Local volunteers help students get ready for school with shopping trip
Re/Max sponsors 14th annual ‘Up With Kids’
– About 100 local children will get a $125 shopping trip, along with a backpack filled with school supplies, coupons for shoes and a haircut and more on Saturday, Aug. 8. Re/Max Parkside Real Estate agents, employees and community volunteers will be assigned to each student, called “Shoprones,” to help each child pick out what clothes they need for school within their $125 budget.
Up With Kids committee member Darryl Stolz stands with a child after he goes shopping after a past event.
This year is the 14th annual “Up With Kids” back to school shopping event, which begins early in the morning and finishes before Target even officially opens at 8 a.m.
Leading up to the annual event, Re/Max Parkside Real Estate is hosting a food drive to give each child a bag filled with a bag of rice, a can of tuna, a box of cereal, a box of dry milk, a jar of peanut butter, a bag of pasta and a bag of dried beans. Donations may be dropped off at the Re/Max Parkside office on 12th Street downtown.
The children are selected by directors of local nonprofits such as Boys and Girls Club, Loaves and Fishes, Re/Max agents and members of the event committee, and others. One change to this year’s nomination process, committee member and Pacific Trust Mortgage Senior Loan Officer Darryl Stolz said, is that instead of the committee making the final decision using the nominations from the nonprofit directors, those directors were asked to submit the names of five or six families that are in the most need. Those families automatically were sent an invitation. The rest of the children – all of whom are between the ages of 5 and 12 – came from committee nominations.
“What it does is give these kids a good start for the school year,” Stolz said. “It gives them a boost.”
The entire family will be fed breakfast and the Re/Max hot-air balloon will be on-site giving free rides, as well as the Paso Robles Fire Department, who will be at Target with its fire truck.
To raise enough money to give the selected children a leg up, Re/Max is looking for sponsors. So far, Salvation Army of Atascadero and Paso Robles are “Above the Crowd” sponsors, and Key Termite and Pest Control, KD Capital Home Mortgage, Connect Home Loans, Coast Hills Federal Credit Union, Envoy Mortgage and Re/Max of California and Hawaii are “Platinum Sponsors.” Stolz said Re/Max agents also donate to the event.
