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Hog sale raises $35K for Berthoud boys

Joe Garner, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 20, 2007 at midnight

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Emma Vickland, at 13, is learning about the rewards of giving.

She just wanted to help the two Berthoud High School wrestlers who lost their legs in a car accident this week. Vickland said she would donate her share of the sale of her hog Cinderella at Friday's Junior Livestock Auction at the National Western Stock Show.

Instead of bringing about $3,000, the expected price, bidding on Cinderella soared to $35,000 - $6,000 more than the grand champion hog.

Dean and Tracy Dowson, owners of Empire Lakewood Nissan Inc., said they bought Cinderella because they are acquainted with the Berthoud community through their nephew Matt McConnell, a senior who played sports with Tyler Carron and Nikko Landeros.

"We watched the boys grow up together," Tracy Dowson said. "Berthoud is such a great community, and everyone is so close. It was easy for us to help any way we could."

After the auction ended, but while donations still were coming in that raised more than $40,000 toward the boys' medical expenses, Emma said she was delighted - and a little stunned by the kindness of strangers.

"I feel so good," she said.

Tyler and Nikko attend school with Sarah Vickland, 16, Emma's older sister. Sarah and Emma, an eighth-grader at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in Longmont, jointly decided on donating the money.

"We both wanted to help in some way," Emma said.

"I've had a lot of positive reaction from people who think it's a really good thing to do.

"The money is more important to the boys than it is to me," added Emma, one of seven children whose father died of brain cancer two years ago.

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