The humane thing to do
Would-be councilman Garcia returns raffle money to local animal shelter

By Gaye Brown de Alvarez
Staff Writer

GALLUP — At Saturday night's reverse raffle for the Gallup-McKinley Humane Society at Red Rock Park, amid the chaos and the confusion of too many people, not enough food, lots of alcohol and prizes galore, one little item was overlooked.

Gallup resident, city council candidate and ticket-buyer Cecil Garcia's ticket number was still on the board, never having been eliminated. Even after the prize went to the final three, Garcia's number was still on the board.

"This was so totally my fault," said ticket seller Misty Fairchild. She sold him the ticket in the Albertson's parking lot one hour before the event, when she stopped to buy punch. She then forgot to put the ticket in the raffle. She was visibly upset about her mistake at the function, upset, she said, because she had always tried to be so careful about tickets and money.

Garcia asked organizers about why his number hadn't been eliminated, and the oversight was discovered. Out of the nearly 400 tickets sold only one was not accounted for. His.

The three winners, who had earlier agreed to split the $10,000 prize, offered to compensate Garcia with some of their earnings, but Cozy Balok of the Humane Society refused their generosity.

She offered to reimburse Garcia the cost of the ticket, $100, with an apology, but wound up eventually having to offer him $2,000 for his troubles. The money paid to Garcia would have to come off the profit made by the group.

He accepted the money, but Patti Herrera, one of the winners, said he was "muscling" the organizers into coming up with more money to compensate him.

"We just wanted to make it right," Balok said in an interview Tuesday. Her main concern is the Humane Society and the animals it serves. The event is the Human Society's biggest fund-raiser of the year, and all the volunteers work hard to make sure that everything comes off without a hitch. "I want people to trust the Humane Society."

But someone called Garcia and said, "come take your sign out of my yard, and I'm not voting for you," Garcia said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

So, around noon, he went up to the Humane Society and gave back $1,900 plus a $100 donation of the cost of the ticket.

"It was a big misunderstanding," Garcia said. "We worked it out. She (Misty) felt bad and I gave her a big hug."