A pop tab weighs 0.3 grams; the whole can weighs 14.4 grams.

At 453.6 grams to the pound, the tab harvester would dispose of 1,512 cans to get a pound of tabs.

However, saving only the pop tab isn’t smelly or messy from cola dripping out of empty cans so the idea as a fundraiser works in the sense that it’s much cleaner.

Was Wally Crosby thinking this direction when he asked his fellow seventh through 12th grade students at St. Regis School to save just the pop-tabs? Most likely not as he was focused on what he, as an eighth-grade student, might be able to do to help someone battling cancer.

Crosby has lost family members to this disease and this quiet young man has wounds from these losses.

“That was my mindset," Crosby said. "I wanted to see if maybe I could help someone going through cancer. That’s when we found out about the Ronald McDonald House and the pop tab fundraiser.”

Crosby didn’t have a goal in mind.

“Let’s just start it and see where it goes and I’ll take what I get” is what he told himself when decided on doing so between April 22 and May 23.

Twenty-three pounds of pop-tabs were collected from his peers and administration!

“Mrs. Kuhl helped me go around to the classrooms and explain what I was doing, and Mr. Cooper got all of the coffee cans to put them in for me,” he said.

The tabs get recycled, and funds go toward housing families with a child undergoing treatment at the Ronald McDonald House. The funds may also be applied toward the cost of chemotherapy at some treatment centers, sponsored by the Ronald McDonald House program.

Mr. Stanek’s class became the Pop Tab Champs collecting 21 pounds and the reward for first place were individually wrapped popsicles for each student, keeping the pandemic in mind.

The decision that now rests on Crosby’s shoulders is which Ronald McDonald House should receive the 23 pounds of pop-tabs; Missoula or Spokane?

Whichever one he chooses will never forget a rural school in Montana and the kindness displayed from a youngster who wanted to help someone battling a cancer in any way that he could.