Operation Red Nose has given out 96 rides in Williams Lake so far in an effort to keep drunk drivers off the road this holiday season.
“We have been blessed with volunteers,” safer communities co-ordinator Dave Dickson said Wednesday. “We had 18 volunteers one night and 16 the next.”
Four youth organizations who will benefit from the proceeds, are supplying volunteer drivers for the 2013 campaign.
They are the Blue Fins Swim Club, Cariboo Chilcotin Gymnastics Association, Cariboo Chilcotin Youth Fiddlers and the Williams Lake Skate Club.
Each group is expected to supply nine volunteers on the night they are assigned.
To augment the groups’ efforts, local Rotarians and guys like community policing chair Andy Sullivan or Citizens on Patrol chair Bob McIntosh will lend a hand.
“This week six gents from the Lakecity Car Club are coming out to give us a hand,” Dickson said. “We cannot take volunteers that walk in off the street because they have to have a criminal record check already completed.”
As always, the public still needs to be reminded that to use Operation Red Nose they have to have driven a vehicle to the party that night.
“We still get a few calls from people without vehicles and we tell them we aren’t competing against the taxis in town,” Dickson said.
Last Saturday evening’s Cariboo Foundation Hospital Trust Gala kept the program busy and organizers phoned Dickson this week to book the service for next year’s event.
Dickson said the program isn’t perfect, but it’s getting better each year.
“We get wiser all the time in finding ways to streamline the service,” he said.
And it is always a long night. Last Sunday he arrived home at 5:30 a.m. just in time for the deadline to file his nightly report to the Operation Red Nose head office in Quebec City at the Laval University campus.
If you find yourself in need of a ride, call Operation Red Nose at 250-392-2222.
