August 12, 2024
We are delighted to report that, because of your generosity, we raised over $20,000!! This will be reflected on Ari‘s campaign page once all of the donations from Saturday have been deposited. This surpasses our goal to cover all of Rocket’s training costs and the cost of Ari’s sports wheelchair!
I cannot articulate how meaningful your support is to our family. We are so grateful for each one of you who took the time to listen, watch, and participate in Ari’s story.
Thank you for a fantastic event!
We are hoping to continue to raise going forward to help with other things that will improve Ari’s quality of life, such as desperately needed home modifications, vet bills for Rocket, maintenance for our van that accommodates Ari’s wheelchair, etc.
We are glad to have you on our team going forward. Thank you, sincerely, for choosing to support us.
Love,
The Jarrett Family
August 9, 2024
Check out the new coverage of our fundraising campaign and upcoming fundraiser from Megan Knight at WMAR! https://www.wmar2news.com/local/fundraiser-to-help-cover-costs-of-training-a-service-dog-and-buying-a-sports-wheelchair-for-six-year-old-boy
August 8, 2024
We are so excited to see you at our upcoming Trivia Night on August 10 at 5 PM! As a reminder, you can register your trivia team (if you wish) upon your arrival on Saturday. We also want to let you know that if you have purchased an individual ticket, not a table, you may be sitting at a table with other individual players or a small team of players who also did not purchase a whole table. If that’s not how you’d like to play trivia, please consider buying a whole table. We will also have some individual seats available outside of any table for individual ticket holders.
Finally, we will have refreshments at this event, courtesy of The Hideaway! I cannot express enough our gratitude to them for their support. Please note, however, that due to some unexpected and much appreciated local news coverage, we expect to have more ticket buyers on the day of the event, and we will try to accommodate as many people as possible with food and drinks. We appreciate your understanding as we are skilled in the world of wheelchairs, wound care, g-tubes, and health insurance, but not in event planning (yet).
Thank you so very much and please contact me with questions or if anything needs to be changed with regard to your ticket or table registration!
July 21, 2024
We are now offering several auction items, sports memorabilia, Ravens tickets, and Orioles tickets, for live auction, even if you are unable to attend this event in person! The link to bid on these items is: https://e.givesmart.com/events/DTe//
The auction closes on the date of Ari’s trivia night!
July 15, 2024
Ari is involved in wheelchair sports through Kennedy Krieger Institute, and in adaptive tennis, through JTCC. He uses a loaned wheelchair when he plays sports, but it is too big for him and it’s difficult for him to participate as a result. Both of these programs are incredible—several Paralympic athletes and national competitors started in these same programs. We are raising funds for a sports wheelchair that is the perfect size for Ari so that he can continue to play tennis, basketball, and baseball! He is incredibly motivated and actually just finished tennis camp with JTCC this summer. He starts up again in the fall!
As someone who knew pretty much nothing about adaptive sports, I did my research, talked to instructors, and we are looking to get a chair that Ari can use for multiple sports (there are different chairs for basketball and tennis, and some that can be used for both—which is what we want), and that is adjustable as he grows.
July 15, 2024
We’ve already sold a few tables for this event so be sure to register ASAP! You do not need to be a trivia player to attend and participate (me, to me)! Feel free to purchase a ticket and answer exactly no trivia questions!
We did a ton of research on how to obtain a service dog for Ari and determined the following:
1. You can get a fully trained service dog from a charitable organization, but they are in high demand and usually have a long waiting list—we’ve been on the waiting list for a couple of organizations for over two years
2. You can buy a fully trained service dog, but the cost is over $30,000, which is not covered by insurance
3. You can work with a breeder and a dog trainer and do the training in home—which has no wait list and is about half the cost of buying a fully trained dog; this is the option we chose. We carefully chose a breeder and trainer who has a ton of experience training service dogs. We begin training on July 25.
Rocket will be trained to perform a compulsive retrieve, picking up anything Ari drops from the wheelchair, no matter what it is. He will perform other tasks designed to assist with Ari’s mobility, and will accompany to the hospital whenever he is admitted. Since Ari is going into second grade, and wanting as much independence at school as possible, and since we spent a couple weeks in the hospital last year alone, we wanted Rocket to be part of our routine as soon as possible. The purpose of our trivia night is to raise funds for his training, as well as for an athletic wheelchair for the sports programs Ari is participating in this fall.
