Inaugural event lets kids experience big vehicles

  • 2015-03-12
Last week, the first ever Cape Coral Touch-a-Truck event gave local children a chance not only to see those trucks up close, but also an opportunity to climb inside them and explore.

The weather was cooperative during the event, which took place on March 7, and around 3,000 people turned out to look at the 30 different trucks on display. Kids and adults had the option of climbing into a modern fire truck, an antique fire truck, an ambulance, and a vacuum truck from the Public Works Department, among others.

While fun was at the heart of the Touch-a-Truck event, it was also designed to be a fundraiser for the National Fragile X Foundation. Eight-year-old Ethan Leighty, the grandson of the event's co-chair Fran Marsino, has Fragile X Syndrome, one of the most common genetic causes of autism.

The Touch-a-Truck event itself was free, but Marsino and the other organizers also put together a raffle, so that people could buy tickets to support the Fragile X Foundation. The organizers could have used printing services to produce the tickets for the raffle. By the Thursday before the event, more than $4,000 had been raised from raffle ticket sales.

Truck passports were given to children attending, so that they could get a stamp for each truck they visited. When a child handed in his or her full passport, he or she could spin a wheel for a prize.