Come for food, stay for fun and help Higher Hopes
WARSAW –Come for the food and stay for the fun, but make sure you get there early. That’s Tom Roahrig’s advice for anyone coming to the Higher Hopes Therapeutic Riding Center Auction.
The 16th annual event will be held on Saturday, Dec. 3 at River View High School. Doors open at 4 p.m. and auction begins at 5 p.m.
Roahrig said the auction usually grosses between $17,000 and $20,000 and helps Higher Hopes, which provides therapeutic riding opportunities for children and adults with disabilities, with operating costs, equipment upgrades and making sure no one is turned away regardless of ability to pay.
Auction items include: Toys, tools, tack, donated items, travel packages, theme baskets, fruit baskets and a variety of other items.
There also will be a 50/50 drawing, silent auction, cake auction, saddle raffle, door prizes, homemade desserts, soups sandwiches and more.
Roahrig believes it’s the enthusiasm of those who help organize the auction and gather raffle items, the help of River View’s FFA and the school itself that have kept the event going for 16 years.
“The FFA sponsors it, is there helping in the kitchen, during the auction and helps set up on Friday and tear down early Sunday morning when it wraps up,” he said.
Roahrig said donations are up this year and some of the ones he’s excited to have are a generator form Auer Ace Hardware, packages from Kalahari Water Park and Kentucky Horse Park and VIP Coshocton County Fair passes.
“Everything we get is quality and we have everything from A to Z,” he said. “The horse tack is there too. There are saddles, bridles, blankets, you name it, we have it. There really is something for everyone.”
People come from near and far for the auction.
“We get people from West Virginia and Pennsylvania and all over the state,” Roahrig said. “I think part of the draw is the auctioneers. People come to see Wayne and those guys.”
The auctioneers at the event will be Wayne Yoder, Eli Troyer and Mel David.
“It’s really elevated from an auction to an event,” Roahrig said. “Our first auction we only made $2,000 or something like that. Now they usually last seven hours. One time it even went to 1 a.m. I had an auctioneer tell me if you can hold a crowd for three to four hours you are doing good, but we’ve held them from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.”
Category: People & Places
