A good reason to miss school

We took Samantha out of school for a couple hours today to do something important.

It was a chance to tell Dominic's story.

A couple weeks ago our friends at the Alberta Children's Hospital asked if we'd be able to represent them for a cheque presentation at the local Save-On Foods here in Medicine Hat.

We don't get asked to do much anymore with regards to him, so it was an obvious reply: yes!

We've done a few of these over the years. I remember one of the first ones was at Costco. And in every case, it's supporting various initiatives which wind up raising money for the hospital.

Usually that's an ask at the till. "Would you like to donate a dollar?" Sometimes the employees stop asking after a while because of how many people say no. And I get it; you don't want to be bombarded with more requests for money with the way inflation is these days.

But there's a reason they ask. And hearing stories like Dominic's hopefully makes them more empowered to ask, and maybe that sense of community grows a little stronger because of it.

The folks at Save-On Foods have continued to ask, and the Medicine Hat store raised the most for Alberta Children's than any other Save-On in the province. A total of $122,737.53 was raised - way more than we'll raise in our little auction next weekend.

It's important to remember that every cent does count. So we hope you'll share and participate in our auction which begins Sept. 29 on our Facebook group - www.facebook.com/groups/dominicstrong.

If you don't want to do the auction but still want to donate, you can get a tax receipt when you donate through Extra Life - www.extra-life.org/participant/sean (or /trish, or any of our teammates' pages at www.extra-life.org/team/dominicstrong).

It was good to tell his story but it's never easy. I broke down, and Trish finished talking for me. Sam played shy for a bit but had her smile nice and big for the photo.

It was important we were all there together.