BENEFIT: Community support for Hildebrandt appreciated

Thank you to everyone who attended the No One Fights Alone dinner and auction benefiting Joann Hildebrandt on Saturday, April 25, at the Post Falls Senior Center.

We appreciated the community support for our event. We would like to publicly express how much we appreciated all the love and support we received on Saturday night.

We would like to thank the following for all their support and help on the event: The Post Falls Senior Center and their staff for the wonderful dinner and venue, Randy Wells - our amazing auctioneer, Ryan Davis our MC for the evening, Platinum Mortgage - Lisa Brown for all the soda donation, Odom Corporation for the Beer donation, Vehrs for the wine donation, Community 1st Bank - Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene Branch team members for all their help with baked goods and help that evening.

We are so proud of this community, the businesses and individuals that made donations to the silent auction. There are so many that we are unable to list all of you, but know that we appreciate everything you gave and we want you to know how much you have helped Joann and Allen. Thank you!

TONYA MEYER, Community 1st Bank - Post Falls

Chair of No One Fights Alone Joann Hildebrandt Fundraiser

TREES: Volunteers help make the event

The Kootenai County Arbor Day program is run entirely by volunteers that donate hundreds of hours to make the program a success. We especially appreciated all the volunteers that helped bag the 2,500 trees given to the fourth-graders (and we couldn't have done it without the enthusiastic efforts of Venture High School students!)

Also a special thanks to more than 150 young artists that participated in the art contest to design the commemorative stickers for this year.

The annual costs for trees and commemorative stickers is nearly $2,000 per year, so we'd like to thank these companies and organizations for their generous support:

Specialty Tree Service; Idaho Forest Group; Idaho Veneer Company; Idaho Department of Lands; Potlatch Corporation; Stimpson Lumber Company; Inland Empire Paper Company; Out on a Limb Tree Service; Northland Nursery; Coeur d'Alene Safeway; Starbucks Coffee; The Coeur d'Alene Press and Coeur d'Alene Master Gardeners.

We also want to thank all that attended the official Coeur d'Alene Arbor Day celebration on Saturday at the Landings City Park. In spite of rain and snow showers, more than 25 volunteers (including Girl Scout Troop 3003) planted 17 large street trees and enjoyed a free picnic lunch thanks to Sun Valley Tree Service. Awards were given out to the Arbor Day Art contest winners and Councilman Dan Gookin received the Tree City USA flag from the state of Idaho recognizing Coeur d'Alene as qualifying for this award for the past 31 years. We encourage everyone who received free seedlings to take good care of them. They will be a living legacy of 2015 Arbor Day.

If you would like to be a corporate sponsor or support this program in other ways, please contact us.

JOHN SCHWANDT and KATIE KOSANKE, co-chairs

Kootenai County Arbor Day Program