Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Christmas charity needed!!!! Please help!!!

It is not often I reach out to the shooting community but in this case I make an exception. One of my students Terry Shoemaker came to Trinidad State Junior College with a dream of becoming a 1000 yard riflesmith and return to his home state of Pennsylvania to compete with his old friends and build the rifles he so loves to shoot. Terry's dream has come to harsh and abrupt stop. Over the summer Terry began to feel ill and was then diagnosed with lymphoma and is now in competition for his life as he undergoes chemotherapy.
Terry has lost his hair and quite a bit of weight and has become a fragile shell of student that walked into my office two years ago. Yet he made me a promise that he was going to continue in his studies and machine shop labs because he was not going to let this get him. The sign of a true competitor and I tip my hat with pride to him.
Terry is one of those students that is always willing to place his work on the back burner in order to assist a fellow classmate who is struggling with a machining formula or assigned project. I have seen him drop what he is doing to lend a hand in my classes when he sees that I am attending to someone and another student requires help as well. These are the people that give and ask for nothing in reward but are content to see others succeed as a result of their help and selfless kindness. These are those that I call �the gentle� people of the world.
Well my gentle person could use all of our assistance now. You may know that most students get through their college years on a hope and a prayer and that money is always tight add treating cancer to that equation and money becomes non existent. Terry has two daughters that want badly to see their father for Christmas but the doctors told Terry not to fly in he weakened condition and the three day drive alone is not feasible. I would like to try to raise the money to fly his two daughters round trip from Pennsylvania to Colorado for Christmas and maybe have a little left over so that he could provide a nice present for them.
I know times are hard for many of us and money is tight but we could all feel better for a helping out a fellow shooter be with his daughters for Christmas this year and we can have a better sense of the true gift of giving for a worthy cause this year as we gather with our own families. I am going to start the drive for joining terry with his girls for Christmas with a $100 donation. I will print a list of all those who donate on Christmas day and hopefully with pictures of Terry with his girls no amounts will be listed with the names it does not matter if you can give $5 or $500 all will be thankfully accepted.
There will be two ways to donate to help this dream come true for Terry.
One through the TSJC Educational Foundation by contacting Toni DeAngelis

Toni DeAngelis
Executive Director
TSJC Educational Foundation
600 Prospect St.
Trinidad, CO 81082
719-846-5520/1-800-621-8752 ext 5520
[email protected]

Two through PayPal and making a donation to the �Terry Shoemaker Christmas Fund�.
By sending the donations to speedy.godzillamsn.com and I will turn them over to Toni.

May God Bless you all for your help!

Merry Christmas,
Speedy Gonzalez

[img width=700 height=503]http://i48.tinypic.com/95okdd.jpg[/img]

[email protected] doesn't sound very acedemic IMO.

You'll have to forgive me but this looks like a good old fashioned scam to elicit $$ from good folks with big hearts.

I agree that this certainly does set off the BS Detector. It was also posted elsewhere.

The lady named in the posting does exist. I left word at her office about this posting and the suggestion that if it was legitimate, that she work with and through the owner of 24hcf.

Chuck

What's the percentage of donations that goes for administration?

Gotta be honest with ya, SGY, if you were a regular poster and people had some time to get to know ya you'd maybe stand a chance. As it stands I doubt you'll get a single donation and personally, I think you should take your tin cup elsewhere.

Merry Christmas to you, too.
Good bye.

You're a good man there Chuck.

I found this guide to be a very easy way to contribute:

Thank you for your call today regarding the Terry Shoemaker Fund. Here is the link that will take you to the Foundation�s secure online donation site.

https://olg.campusnet.net/OnLineGiv...dpdM1PS9LTLYR8IWwQ4JbLkU5kPerQ==&fg=

After clicking on the link, please register using the Sign Up Now feature on the page. It will ask for your basic information to set up your profile. Once you�ve done that, please click on Make a Donation. This is where you can input your donation amount. In the designation drop down menu, you may choose the Terry Shoemaker Fund. From there, complete the information requested. You will receive a computer generated receipt for your records.

If you have any questions, you may reach me at the number below. Thank you for your generosity and kindness to help TSJC student, Terry Shoemaker.

~ Toni

Toni DeAngelis
Trinidad State Junior College
Director of Development & College Relations
Exec Director - TSJC Educational Foundation
600 Prospect St., Trinidad, CO 81082
719-846-5520/1-800-621-8752 x5520

Alumni Magazine Foundation Information Give Online

Click the link below to check on Speedy at TSJC

http://gunsandammomag.com/cs/Satellite/IMO_GA/Story_C/Bullseye+For+TSJC+Gunsmithing+Students

100 percent of the donations go to Terry. There is not a dime going to administration. I take care of my students as if they were my own when under my care. This is the way we did it in the Marine Corps it worked pretty well there and it still works for me now. Thanks for your concern about being scammed these days but this is legit boss.

Merry Christmas,
Speedy

Looks legit so hopefully it's on the up and up. If so, that's a nice gesture and I wish you the best....

Seeing how the donations do not go to an email based through the campus AND the link posted as a "guide" comes up as a dead link...this still smells very fishy to me.

Sounds like someone using an existing cause to benefit from it for their own means.

Kind of like someone standing outside a building ringing a bell for the Salvation Army, then taking their own bucket home and collecting the cash.

Terry's donation link is now funtional, I did not copy and paste the entire link on my first posting. My bad! Donate or not you should keep Terry in your prayers as former Navy Vet. and fellow shooter he and his family need all the help they can get to make this a special Christmas holiday..

Speedy

Nebraska,



Note the number of posts for our .com "friend": 5. More than a little questionable.

I know that a first post is normally used by a new member to introduce themselves, but I had to answer this thread first.

I'm a medically retired Special Forces weapons and communications specialist, in a wheelchair due to my service, the winner of a bronze star as well as numerous other military awards, and a summer student of Speedy, who I first met about 2 years ago. I believe that was the same summer that I met Terry, a quick learner and a guy that would help out anyone above all else, even those people that he didn't care to associate with, yet he would put helping others above getting his own work done, and his own work is exceptional.

I know that there are a lot of scams out there. I get 10 or 20 every day in my e-mail, but this one is legitimate. I was there, in Trinidad, CO last summer when Terry was first diagnosed with cancer. They immediately put him in the hospital, in Denver I believe, and the doctors started figuring out what to do next. A week or so later he came by the shop and I expected to find a middle-aged man that was distraught over being diagnosed with something that could be and apparently will be terminal, but instead I was greeted by the same Terry that I had known for the past 2 years, a vibrant man that was not going to let this keep him down or keep him away from completing his work at TSJC.

TSJC, Trinidad State Junior College, is a small college, a 2 year community college with argueably the best gunsmithing program in the country and a college that's small enough that something of this magnitude is noticed by all, not just a few. If you think that this is a scam, and apparently many of you do, then go to the TSJC website, http://www.trinidadstate.edu/ and contact the head office. But PLEASE don't take up time insulting Speedy. The e-mail address that he gave out is his personal e-mail address and it matches his personality. Speedy has stayed late and even come in on Saturday so that we could get more shop time. A finer man you will not find, and if you do a google search for "Speedy Gonzales rifles" you can find out all about him, or have even the remotest interest in benchrest shooting then you will surely have heard of him.

So donate or not, keep Terry in your prayers or not, but please don't write this off as a scam because the person that spoke up about it has an odd e-mail address.

Flame suit is now donned. I have pretty thick skin.

Robert sends

Speedy thanks for the information about Terry. As you stated he is a fine individual. I contacted Toni yesterday. Please keep me informed as what is going on with Terry.
Thanks Gary

I would feel a lot more comfortable about this being real if Rick posted the IP addresses of SGY and Paradude54.

No offense intended, but a poster with 5 posts and another with one does make me wonder just a tad.

More than a few of us can do a lot with just an IP address... and report back to the 'Fire.

Having posted this, I feel like the Grinch, so I do want to note that I hope this is the real deal! If it is, my experience is that most shooters have a heart of gold and you will find help here.

John

Kind of interesting that all these NEW people coming on endorsing this.

Jim

Sounds fishy to me, and I'm a new guy.

if it is, these guys need an ass whippin for using vets for money.

I've heard good things about Speedy and the rifles he's built. If someone like Butch Lambert trusts him I'd say he's GTG...

http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/3529575/Gunsmith_School#Post3529575

To pop onto a new site and ask for $100 donations, and to have a couple of other new accounts created whose only activity is to endorse the charity...

Far too likely to be a scam.