SALISBURY – The letter to her neighbors went like this:
“My name is Addison Eury. I am 6. I am collecting aluminum cans for animals at Faithful Friends. Please help by placing your cans in a bag at the end of your driveway on Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012, before 5 p.m. Thanks!”
In her Grace Ridge neighborhood, as mother Amy was driving from house to house, Addison received a copy of each letter from her 4-year-old sister, Lauren, and stuck the message under each mailbox.
The Eury family went to 246 houses, then waited two weeks.
The day the cans were supposed to be collected, Addison’s father, Dwayne, borrowed a neighbor’s trailer. The family also had posted five cardboard signs at the subdivision’s various entrances to remind residents of the collection day.
Addison picked up almost every bag and threw it onto the trailer as it slowly rolled down the streets. Lauren helped with a couple, too, and once the bags of cans became a small mountain on the trailer, Dwayne had to help throw some on top.
In a few instances, Grace Ridge residents chased the trailer with their aluminum cans when they realized they had missed the pickup.
After two hours, in addition to all of her cans, Addison also received from her Grace Ridge friends $5 in cash, a bag of dog food and a box of dog treats for the animals at the new shelter.
Maybe the most rewarding part of Addison’s story came Saturday morning when she delivered all the cans to the Faithful Friends drop-off point at the shelter off Grace Church Road.
“I heard about this going on, so I was hoping I’d be here,” said Mary Padavick of Faithful Friends.
Over the past four years, the donation of aluminum cans, which the animal sanctuary redeems at a recycling location for cash, has led to almost $25,000 for Faithful Friends.
LeRoy Saunders picks up the cans for Faithful Friends, and he said Addison’s haul was the most that has been in the collection kennel at any one time.
A first-grader at Knollwood, Addison dressed in a pink tie-dye shirt, jean shorts and flip-flops to help with the last job – unloading the cans from the trailer into the collection kennel.
Amy Eury gave both Addison and Lauren work gloves for the task, and they received help from Dwayne; Amy’s parents, Judy and Chuck Petersen; and volunteer Phillip Lentz.
Addison frequently visits the Faithful Friends shelter, which opened earlier this year. In fact, she was there for the grand opening, and she mentioned to Amy and Dwayne that she would like to volunteer at Faithful Friends.
But she was too young. So as part of her sixth birthday in August, Addison liked the idea of working in another way for the shelter.
“Cans make money,’ Amy said. “Cans was the one thing we could do.”
After all the cans were unloaded Saturday, Addison wanted to do one more thing.
She went back to the shelter and played with some of the kittens.Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.