Pflugerville Middle School Raffle No Mere Fundraiser, But Labor Of Love

PFLUGERVILLE, TX — In buying tickets for a raffle, the Pflugerville Middle School community is doing so as an act of love. A vintage travel trailer is up for grabs, the proceeds benefiting the family of an educator there fighting cancer.

“We just want to help him feel better about how his family is, feel better about not being saddled with medical bills,” Cindy Curtis, a teacher at the school, told KVUE. She was speaking of former Assistant Principal Luis Ham, now in hospice care.

Saddened by his illness, those at the school sought to do something to help his family. Then Curtis — who has experience flipping real estate — remembered Ham's beat-up trailer and recruited others to help remodel it as a raffle item.

And then, it seems the entire community stepped up to help spruce the trailer up.

"People who worked with him years ago got in touch and said, 'I used to work with Mr. Ham,' " Curtis told the news station. One lady said her husband, a plumber, would be happy to enhance the trailer's plumbing. The school secretary drafted her electrician husband to rework the wiring.

The school's art teacher donated a pretty cool bonus for the now-souped-up trailer, a hand-crafted smartphone speaker valued at $500.

"It's been pretty special," Curtis said.

Ham has appropriated his surname as ice-breaking fodder, Curtis said. He makes pig jokes often, and his office is filled with decorative pigs he collects as a nod to his porcine-referencing last name.

He told the news station how touched he was at the remodeling effort by those whose lives he touched: "I'm surprised, but not surprised, because they are just an amazing, loving group of people," he told the news station. "It's amazing."

On the school's Facebook page, the fruits of that labor of love are in full display. The blue-and-white trailer is a handsome mobile home, ready for the lucky winner to hit the road.

In a recent update on ticket sales posted on the school's Facebook page, $7,450 had been raised just through PayPal as of a week ago. And that's not even counting the total from the initial run of 3,000 tickets, according to school officials.

"The generosity of this community never ceases to amaze," someone wrote on the Facebook page.

The raffle is scheduled is scheduled to take place Dec. 16. To purchase a raffle ticket, click on this link. All proceeds benefit Ham's family.

>>> Image via Shuterstock