People from Heber City and surrounding areas came together last night for an auction to support a Heber City woman whose daughter died recently.
Brooklyn Schneider was 12 when she had an accident that took her life on June 4. Her mother is Bridget Whiting.
Whiting’s friend, Nikole Webb, had an idea to help the mother who has been grieving.
“I was like, ‘What can I do?,’ and I started it out as, ‘Hey, let’s do a little raffle. I’ll collect some things, and we’ll all get together and pull tickets,’ and it blossomed into this auction. It blew up,” Webb said.
People from Heber, Midway, Kamas and other areas contributed 46 auction items.
Those included tickets for a helicopter ride, antique knives, a custom fishing rod, photograph prints and even a four-hour session with a skid steer from Trout Creek Builders. Many items were worth hundreds of dollars.
In total, the sales raised $8,000.
“It meant the world to me, to be honest," Webb said. "It was beautiful. I mean, just the love that poured out last night was amazing."
The gathering was at Labrum Ford, where Bridget Whiting works. Van Kelly was the volunteer auctioneer, and Hitman Productions sent a DJ for no charge.
"What’s really fun is there are people in our community here that love to do auctions, and they showed up. I don’t even know if they knew Bridget, but I think they just showed up for the auction part. But it was just amazing, and my heart is just huge from all of it,” Webb said.
Goochy Goo BBQ and Roonies Ice Cream set up shop and donated their proceeds.
Twisted Legion Motorcycle Club also raised $1,400 at a memorial ride on Saturday.
The strong showing from the community took place just a couple of weeks ahead of Brooklyn’s birthday, July 29.
This summer has also brought other tragedies in the area. Brooklyn was one of five young people from Wasatch County to die within a week of each other.
And last Friday, seven-year-old Zai Rodriguez-Irizarry was killed by a stray bullet that traveled through her bedroom wall from a neighboring apartment.