The grand prize winner for the 2008 Rotary Club of South Lake Tahoe’s Great Car Sweepstakes was determined at the Rotary’s dinner meeting at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe.

 With more than eighty people in attendance for this major annual Rotary fund raising event, excitement mounted as each of the 25 finalists, one by one, selected a key and tried their luck opening the door to a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee.  It wasn’t until the 20^th key was selected that the Jeep’s flashing lights and honking horn indicated the winner of this year’s event, Norm Findley.  Norm’s key unlocked the door to the brand new Jeep Cherokee identifying him as the grand prize winner.  As such, Norm had a choice of selecting a 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee, a 2008 Toyota Prius or $25,000 cash.  Norm opted for the $25,000 cash in lieu of a vehicle.

Once the grand prize winner was selected, a drawing was held among the 24 other finalists for a second prize of $1,000 and Linn Parmley was the lucky recipient.

Fire Chief Lorenzo Gigliotti (left) presents a $25,000 check to the grand prize winner Norm Findley	Chief Gigliotti presents a $1,000 second place check to Linn Parmley

This year’s car raffle was a huge success.  We had a great turn-out for the event and there are many people to thank for their hard work on making this event happen: Marv Goshorn, Bob Taylor, Arnie Fontaine, John Upton, Buck Barkley, Dick Horn, Mark Lucksinger and, of course, Chief Gigliotti. Special mention goes out to Dick Derby who raised the bar on ticket sales for the rest of the club next year. 

A big thank you also to all club members for your support on this, our biggest fund raising event of the year.  We only narrowly missed our goal of selling all 1500 tickets this year – a goal which we’re sure to reach in 2009.

Thanks also to CardinaleWay of South Lake Tahoe, a true community partner, for providing the vehicles and their support and sponsorship of this event.