Editor: Tristan Vance is my six-year-old son who read your story, “Aldergrove family looks to community for help,” several weeks ago. The story is about the young boy Carter Mantta, who is suffering from chronic granulomatous disease.
He didn’t like that Carter and his family have to go through so much grief, so he wanted to do something to help. His mother suggested he could do a bottle drive to raise money to donate to the Manttas account at the Royal Bank in Aldergrove.
Tristan wrote a letter and he and mom got enough photocopies so they could be delivered to every house on our street and the next one too (about 110 single family homes in Brookswood).
The next week, Tristan brought his Mom (pulling the wagon), three-year-old sister Arianna, seven-year-old cousin, Rachel and friends, Ava and Julia, and went collecting.
When they were about halfway up our street, I got a phone call to bring the truck “and hook up the trailer.” Before we were done, I was literally crawling over garbage bags of bottles and cans in our utility trailer and was getting mighty concerned there wouldn’t be enough space left in the back of the truck to carry what was left.
We went directly to the bottle depot in Langley and filled up three mega-pallets.
Shortly after the folks at the depot managed to get through counting everything we had given them, Tristan picked up a cheque and delivered it to the Royal Bank for Carter’s family.
The grand total for Tristan’s bottle drive was a surprising $174.70.
Thank you to all who donated to the cause and yes, Tristan said he’d like to do something like that again. But he’s going to need a bigger wagon.
Jason Vance,
Brookswood
