Teen to debut Trick-or-Eat to help others on Halloween

By Fran Lyons

The inaugural “Trick or Eat” Halloween event will be Oct. 31. All neighborhoods in Maricopa are invited to participate by donating and volunteering.

High school freshman Cash Riggle came up with the idea last year. He was introduced to a program for high schoolers that requires them to accumulate 100 hours of community service to graduate. He became inspired and started planning.

Where could kids have fun, gather service hours and benefit those in need? Halloween was a perfect choice. How about collecting food while trick-or-treating? Oh, yes.

This year’s event is a food drive that will benefit F.O.R. Maricopa food bank and is focused on “making sure that nobody goes hungry for the holidays,” Cash said. “Our goal is to get as many kids that need service hours to participate and to make sure that people in need can have a good, fulfilling holiday season.”

The event is 5:30–9 p.m. on Halloween night. Forty students are being recruited to collect donations – canned goods and nonperishables – all across Maricopa. They’ll do this while trick-or-treating, in costume or not. Students will be in groups of two or more and will collect five community service hours for their participation.

In addition to food donations, 40 wagons are needed to hold the food. The wagons will be returned to the owners the next day. Volunteers in the neighborhoods willing to be drop locations for wagons overnight are also needed. Contact Kirsten Stodghill, Cash’s mom, know if you can contribute.

“Anything that you can donate will be appreciated and will help someone in need here in Maricopa,” Stodghill said.

 

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This story appears in the October issue of InMaricopa.