Lady golfers donate $3,600 to Safety Net
Ladies in the 9-hole Tuesday morning league at Coeur d’Alene Public Golf Course donate $3,600 to Safety Net on Thursday. Front row from left: Golfers Lonna DeVol and Sherrill McCullough, Molly Allen, co-founder of Safety Net, Kristen Neeser, North Idaho Safety Net liaison, Terry McNabb and Sally West. Back row, golfer Darla Pavlish and Pepper Smock, Safety Net advisory board member.
BILL BULEY/Press
COEUR d’ALENE — Since its inception 15 years ago, Safety Net Inland NW has helped more than 1,500 young people who have aged out of foster care.
That help can be in the form of a bus pass, a pair of steel-toed boots, apartment furniture or getting through college.
“It just depends on the case,” said Molly Allen, co-founder of Safety Net.
The nonprofit will be able to help even more of those leaving the foster care system following a donation Thursday from Ladies in the 9-hole Tuesday morning league at Coeur d’Alene Public Golf Club.
“This $3,600 will go a long way,” Allen said. “There’s a big need here in North Idaho. I had no idea how big the need would be when we started.”
The program annually helps about 100 to 150 young men and women, many in North Idaho, from age 18 to mid-20s, who are no longer in foster care and may not have a place to call home.
According to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, there were about 2,700 children in foster care in 2022 in Idaho.
In the past five years, the lady golfers have donated more than $10,000 to Safety Net, with this year’s donation the largest.
Funds came from a June tournament that attracted about 100 women golfers and raffle items and drawings for gift baskets donated by businesses.
Lonna DeVol, retiring treasurer for the ladies golf group, said they like to help Safety Net because they know the money is put to good use and impacts many lives.
Safety Net has little administrative costs, with just one part-time employee.
“Once they get to be 18 and older, they're out on their own,” she said. “That’s where Safety Net comes in.”
Allen said the money will help fill a storage facility with items where those leaving foster care shop. They are free to select things that will help them get by on their own.
“We take care of a wide range of needs,” Allen said. “We just dropped off grocery money for a young man. We’re about to get somebody into an apartment.”
They even provide the unexpected, like a wheelchair-accessible crib.
Another person needed steel toe boots for work.
“That’s not on anybody’s radar,” Allen said. “We’re doing all kinds of things no one else does. We catch it all.”