VADNAIS HEIGHTS — Local singer-songwriter Tim Mahoney and bands The World According to Garth and Uncle Chunk will perform at a benefit concert from 3-8 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 16 at Jimmy’s Banquet Center, 1132 E. County Road E., Vadnais Heights. The Minnesota Kenya Community Church Choir will also be featured, as well as a silent auction and raffle for a Mexican island vacation.
Admission is $10 per person; $15 per couple; and $20 per family. A pasta bar meal and Kenyan food are included.
The raffle prize is a seven-night vacation for two at Casa Sirena, Isla Mujeres, Mexico, with round-trip airfare included. Raffle tickets are $20 each, and can be purchased at the event. To buy a raffle ticket prior to the concert, e-mail ImForYouBenefitConcert@hotmail.com, or call Sue Banovetz at 651-653-1723.
Proceeds from the benefit will help the surviving 4-year-old child of Bilha Omare, who, along with her 12-year-old son, Kinley, and 9-year-old daughter, Ivyn, were slain by Omare’s husband and father of the three children in their Vadnais Heights home in October.
“The benefit concert will help Bilha’s family deal with the extraordinary challenges facing them because of the loss of their loved ones and the role they’re taking on to bring the little one into their family,” said event organizer, Mandy Maietta, a Vadnais Heights resident and mother of one of Kinley’s friends. “My son and many students and teachers at Sunrise (Park Middle School) have been traumatized by the senseless deaths of Kinley and his mother and sister. They’re grappling with trying to understand it and to deal with this horrible loss.
“The benefit is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to come together to help Bilha’s youngest child and to turn grief into something positive. It’s an opportunity to teach children what it means to be compassionate, to be a leader and to be a member of a community.”
At the time of their deaths, Omare, 32, was a nursing student at Hennepin Technical College and was to have graduated last month. She worked at Suite Living of Maplewood, an assisted living and memory care community.
Kinley was a seventh-grade student at Sunrise Park Middle School, and Ivyn was in fourth grade at Willow Lane Elementary School.
— Submitted by Sue Banovetz
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