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White Dove, businesses sponsor cancer benefit
By Melissa Matchak
Last year, White Dove Cafe owner Jeff Michel and Willow Glen residents Kathy and Garth Nobis decided to see if Willow Glen really cares.
This year, with 115 businesses donating prizes, seven restaurants and five wineries donating food and wine, the second annual Willow Glen Cares benefit dinner took place on May 20, 5:30 -8:30 p.m., in the atrium of the Garden Theater Plaza and the White Dove Cafe on Lincoln Avenue.
Proceeds from the fundraiser, which raised $8,000 last year, go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America.
For a tax-deductible $50 ticket donation, the event's attendees sampled food from local restaurants, including Willow Street Wood-Fired Pizza, Mio Vicino, Cafe Primavera, Emperor's Garden and White Dove Cafe. A live auction, complete with California's top fast-talking auctioneer, featured such items as $500 worth of airfare from Peak Travel and private airplane tours over the Bay from a local Hodgkin's disease survivor. A four-piece jazz band from the San Jose Jazz Society, a silent auction and door prizes were also part of the evening's events.
Willow Glen Cares became an event last year when the Nobises were training for the Leukemia Society Rock and Roll Marathon in San Diego in June 2000. Nobis said she approached Michel about holding a fundraising event in his cafe, and it blossomed from there.
"When I asked Jeff if he'd be open to having us use his restaurant, he said he was in 100 percent," Nobis said. "From there it just took off."
Michel said when he and the Nobises talked about having a fundraiser for the nonprofit agency in the restaurant, they decided to make it a citywide event.
"We decided to go the whole nine yards and get all the businesses and restaurants involved," Michel said. "This just shows how the community can come together and support itself for a charity like leukemia. This is a great event."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
