SILOAM SPRINGS — Casey’s General Store in Siloam Springs was the company’s leading fundraiser for Hope For The Warriors, a national nonprofit dedicated to serving veterans, service members and military families.
Top company officials, including Terry Handley, president and CEO of Casey’s, and Mike Richardson, vice president of marketing, visited Siloam Springs on Friday to celebrate the achievement and present a $845,797.45 check to Hope For The Warriors’ John Langford, senior director of strategic partnerships, and Robin Kelleher, president and CEO.
The check represented donations collected in all Casey’s stores across 16 states throughout the month of November, according to a press release from the company. Customers were able to purchase paper dog tags for $1, which were displayed throughout the store. The Siloam Springs Casey’s store raised a total $7,580 during the campaign.
“To raise $7,580 with dog tags means that you guys really shared the message of Hope to a lot of people. … Your impact has been tremendous and we cannot appreciate you all enough,” Kelleher said to Siloam Springs’ Casey’s employees.
Nationally, Hope For The Warriors provides comprehensive support programs for service members, veterans, and military families that are focused on transition, health and wellness, peer engagement, and connections to community resources, the press release states.
The nonprofit was founded aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C., in 2006 by military families, Kelleher said.
“We’ve been supporting the wounded and military families ever since throughout the country now with comprehensive programming that spans from case management, to transitions to sports and recreation, whatever that family needs,” she said. “It’s a very holistic approach to care. Most importantly we do include the entire military family in our programming.”
In the past seven years, Casey’s has donated a total of $4 million to Hope For The Warriors, the press release states. Kelleher said this year’s donation will have a significant impact on the programming the nonprofit is able to offer, including enabling them to hire more people for the social work team to do relief work. Currently, the organization is providing relief for members of the U.S. Coast Guard in New England who are impacted by the government shut down, she said.
“This allows us to be flexible and to jump in situations like that or even hurricane relief situations,” she said. “When you have this type of significant donations it allows us to be that flexible and make sure we are covering needs for military families throughout the year.”
The organization can help with necessities such as housing or food, as well as provide support in other ways, Kelleher said. For example, the nonprofit heard about a woman from Florida who was flying to Germany after her husband was injured by an improvised explosive device. In a panic, the woman packed her suitcase with flip-flops and shorts, all she had in her home state of Florida. Hope For The Warriors was able to take her shopping and buy her warm winter gear to prepare her for the German winter, Kelleher said.
In another case, a young man from Iowa in the U.S. Navy was hit by an IED and lost both of his arms and legs, Kelleher said. When the man was in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center he was asked what was the first thing he wanted to do when he got home. His reply was “Order a Casey’s pizza.” The company flew several pizzas to the hospital and they were baked in the cafeteria.
“For the general public to understand, that having a little piece of home when you’re from the Midwest and you land in the Washington, D.C., area, it’s a completely different world, so to have something like a Casey’s pizza that is home to you at that hospital means the world to them, you can’t even measure, there are no metrics you can assign to that, it’s an impact you can’t measure,” Kelleher said.
Richardson said that Casey’s typically does four fundraisers a year for organizations such as Hope For The Warriors, Children’s Miracle Network and Special Olympics. As of Friday, the company had 2,110 stores open, with 30 to 40 more expected to open before April. The company is the fourth largest convenience store chain in the country and the fifth largest pizza chain, he said.
Richardson said the company has several retired members of the military in top leadership positions and was looking for a way to support veterans. It chose to support Hope For The Warriors because of the work the organization does and the amount of money that goes back to the cause.
The ability of Siloam Springs Casey’s to raise the most money for Hope For The Warriors in the country shows that the employees are a great group of people with a lot of community support, he said.
More information about Hope For The Warriors is available at www.hopeforthewarriors.org.