ARLINGTON — With two bake sales benefitting Mason Garka, along with gourmet baskets, roofing, handbags and belts, and a variety of recycled housewares and collectibles, the 34 vendors in the October Hunt in downtown Arlington Oct. 18 enjoyed a bright sunny day, albeit a bit chilly in the morning.
“It was cold, before the fog burned off,” said organizer Norma Jean Syrie, vice president of the Downtown Arlington Business Association.
The two bake sales for Mason Garka were strategically located at each end of the parking lot. At the south end, Alex and Christina Carbajal sold a vast spread of baked goods in a benefit for their friend’s baby, Garka Mason, who was born in June with HLHS, a.k.a. hydroplasty left heart syndrome.
“When he was born, he had surgery to install little baby tubes and now he needs to get kid-sized tubes,” said Mason’s great aunt, Kerry Munnich.
The Carbajals accepted donations from the community’s many churches and friends of the Arlington Fire Department, where Alex is a firefighter with Mason’s dad, Greg Garka.
“They aren’t related, they are good friends. Alex and Greg grew up together,” explained Christina Carbajal.
“We used the fire hall for staging last night,” Christina said.
DABA provided space at The Hunt for free and Taunya Sanchez donated one of her gourmet gift baskets to raffle off for the sake of Mason.
On the opposite end of The Hunt, the Old Bags of Arlington sold baked goods and bags for their long list of causes, from sports teams to Camp Fire and Kids Kloset, and dinners for 10 families for Thanksgiving and another 10 families for Christmas, as well as the Mason Garka fund.
For information on how to help Mason, call 360-386-8676.
Everyone seemed pleased at the end of the day.
“It’s been a terrific day,” said Sharon O’Brien, who was with her sister and sister-in-law selling 50 percent of their mother’s belongings.
“She recently scaled back into half the space,” said Donna O’Brien. “So we brought the extra stuff down here to sell.”
“We’ve been cooking with gas,” Sharon O’Brien said.
Syrie said she saw lots of people walking away with bags full of stuff.
“It was a fun day,” she said.
“Bev from The Local Scoop came down and took orders. I think she made several trips,” Syrie said.
DABA also offered a scavenger hunt. They distributed almost 80 cards with a list of merchants to visit. Selected from the 22 returned cards, the winners were Amber Petersen and her sister, Breanna Wickliff. They got big baskets full of stuff, said Petersen, the receptionist at The Arlington Times. Each basket was full of games, gifts certificates, popcorn, coloring books, posters, gel pens, slinkies, pencils, and Amber’s had a big pan of bread pudding from The Local Scoop.
“I gave that to my mom,” Petersen said.
Along with DABA’s twice-annual “Hunts” in the city parking lot, it was also a celebration of sorts at the Arlington Farmers Market. The market season ended Oct. 18 with the Snohomish County Farm Tour “Yesterday & Today.” In honor of the celebration of agriculture in north Snohomish County, Mark Winterhalter brought Sugar and Spice to town to offer wagon rides.
“Mark [Winterhalter] donated half the price to rent the wagon for a day,” said Lovejoy. Lovejoy divided with DABA the balance of the price of bring the wagon to town, offering free rides to all visitors, to help make their visits into historic downtown Arlington memorable.
Winterhalter will be back with Sugar and Spice and Santa Claus for the Santa Parade on the first Saturday of December.
The farm tour continued with some of its destinations open on Sunday, but “The Hunt” was a one-day shindig.
