NIAGARA FALLS: Give-away yard sale turns out well for LaSalle family

<!--Michele Deluca--><table width="234" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" background="http://static.cnhi.zope.net/flashpromo/niagaragazette/images/byline_234x60.jpg" height="60"><tr><td><div align="center"><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By Michele Deluca</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br /></font><font size="1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="mailto:michele.deluca@niagara-gazette.com">michele.deluca@niagara-gazette.com</a></font></div></td></tr></table>
Niagara Gazette

June 24, 2009 09:21 pm

— Angie Lucarini’s day started early on Wednesday.
By 7:30 in the morning people were ringing her doorbell with donations for her free yard sale.
Neighbors and strangers were moved to help after an article in the Niagara Gazette detailed her decision to have a give-away where all the items were free to those in need.
The first visitor dropped off several bags of food.
The next came with five shirts.
“Another person came a few moments later,” Lucarini said. “She said, ‘I want you to have this, I’ve never gone without,’ and she put a $20 bill in my hand and three bags of groceries. It just kept coming after that, it never stopped.”
Lucarini, a former teacher and stay-at-home mother of five whose husband Ron is a laid-off GM employee, decided to have the yard sale event after a recent long day of observing people worried about the economy.
On Wednesday an estimated 100 people, some giving and others receiving, flowed up the driveway of her small LaSalle neighborhood home on 73rd Street.
There was about $80 in donations she said, but as soon as they received money she would send her husband Ron to the supermarket to get more to give away.
While she only planned the event from 1-3 p.m. she was still handing donations out at 6 p.m.
“Even a few minutes ago, two men just came and said they had no food at all,” she said during a telephone interview. “He said, ‘You don’t know how much it means to me.’ ”
Leftovers from the event will go to Community Missions, Lucarini said. “I’m just overwhelmed. It far exceeded my expectations completely.”
“God’s going to bless her for what she’s doing,” said Mary Stewart who runs a day care center and picked up several racks for cooking hamburgers for her young charges on the grill.
Amy Washington of Niagara Falls, who had stopped by with her daughter Jasmine Washington, 10, said she had known the family through a church they once attended, and thought the whole idea was very nice.
“They’re very giving people,” she said of the Lucarinis. “That’s why they’re blessed the way they are.”

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