Community rallies for Adams

MILLBROOK — On Nov. 5, 2010, Ian Adams, a 10th-grade student from Millbrook High School, suffered a traumatic brain injury and fell into a coma after being in a serious car accident. Currently Ian is at the Helen Hayes Acute Rehab center in West Haverstraw, Rockland County, receiving intense therapy around the clock to try to help draw him out of his coma.Earlier this month, students, alumni, teachers and members of the Millbrook community came together for Volley for Ian, an event to help raise money for Ian’s medical care.“The middle school student government and the high school student government had been trying to figure out a way to raise money for Ian Adam’s family,” said district Assistant Superintendent Christine Ackerman. “They decided that they would do a volleyball tournament that they would participate in and kids would pay $10 each to sign their teams up.” “We started to think if we got the whole community involved, we would raise more money for the family,” she said. “They asked the teachers to play each other so all the middle school faculty played against the high school faculty.” The fundraiser didn’t stop with volleyball; the event also had what turned out to be one of the day’s highlights — “Kiss the Kangaroo.” That entailed students putting money in a bucket for who they wanted to see kiss a fairly well-behaved kangaroo, who was stationed at the high school. Ackerman said the intended goal of Volley for Ian was to raise $6,000 — the amount equal to the cost of the specific equipment Ian needs to recover from his injuries. However, the community’s generosity exceeded the intended goal. “Every day kids would give money during lunch,” Ackerman said. “The middle school’s goal was to raise $2,500 collectively. The community came and gave their donations to go in and watch the final games, watch the faculty play and watch the kangaroo-kissing contest. They also gave donations to the raffle. “Many people in the community gave us gift cards, coupons, stuff people could put in to raffle,” she continued. “People donated tons of food so kids could eat and didn’t have to leave the event.”Ackerman said after the events for the fundraiser were completed Superintendent Lloyd Jaeger presented the check to the Adams family. “At the time they had raised $10,500, but after everything was counted we raised about $11,000 for the family,” Ackerman said, adding it was an incredible sight to see the whole community gather together for such an important and heartfelt cause.

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