Families Create Fish Tales

Even after 9-year-old Jayme Stracke saw the large paper fish she and her brothers created hanging on the wall at Shoppers Food, she was thinking of her fellow contestants. The creation was part of Arundel Neighborhoods’ Association’s first Community Fish Contest.

“My daughter voted for two others’ fish,” said her mother, Lori Stracke, of Brooklyn Park. “She said, ‘Those are good too. They deserve to win.’”

But it was the rainbow-colored fish with ruffled fins, large lips and bulging eyes Jayme created with her brothers, 11-year-old Andrew and 8-year-old Collin, that captured the hearts of Shoppers’ customers during the contest, which ran for a month until Friday.

The Stracke children, who created the fish with their godmother, Tammy Eder, won first place and a $50 gift card from Shoppers, located at 5722 Ritchie Highway in Brooklyn Park.

Eight other families also competed. Dana and Gerri Brown won second place and a gift card to Cold Stone Creamery. Amy Smith’s family won a pizza from Domino’s Pizza.

The association created the contest as a way to perform community outreach and to enhance its business partnership it established with Shoppers earlier this year, President-Elect Debbie Frank said. The store has donated food items for community events and has allowed the association to decorate the store wall near the registers with seasonally appropriate themes like bunnies for spring.

“It’s just an outreach to the community and a way to get Shoppers involved with the community,” she said.

The Stracke family’s fish was girl-powered from the beginning, Lori Stracke said. Jayme and Eder, “the creative one in the family,” came up with the idea, Stracke said. And the boys?

“The boys said, ‘Tell us what to do,’” she said.

The family spent about six or seven hours over the course of several days working on the fish, she said. Then, they started spreading the word to friends and neighbors to vote.

The siblings didn’t believe it when Stracke told them they won, she said.

“I heard, ‘OMG!’ ‘No way!’ ‘You’re lying!’,” she said, laughing. “The boys said, ‘You’re lying,’ and ‘No way.’ Jayme was, ‘OMG.’ They also said, ‘You’re not messing with us, are you?’ I said, ‘I’m not messing with you,’ and I had to show them the ribbon (posted to the fish on the wall).”

She’s even letting them pick out what they want to spend the gift card on—with some limits: no junk food or soda, and nothing from the cosmetics aisle for Jayme.

“It wasn’t even so much the prize as the honor that they won,” Stracke added.