Wine and Jazz draw hundreds to fund raiser

The best of Nevada and California wines and Big Band jazz drew hundreds to the Ormsby House ballroom Saturday night to aid area cancer victims and their families.

Chairman David Piel said ticket sales approaching 800 may have brought Carson Advocates for Cancer Victims closer to the $15,000 goal for the event, the fourth Winter Wine and All That Jazz wine tasting gala.

"The first year we were here was during the storm of the '97 New Year's Flood," Piel said. "I think it's impressive that many of the wineries here tonight were with us then and stuck with us."

Tunes by Russ Lindquist and his High Sierra Big Band were interspersed with raffles, silent auctions and presentations of awards for the popular choice, critics' choice and governor's trophy winning wines.

But the most important presentation of the evening may have been when 7-year-old Tobin Volberding, of Dayton, was given a giant collection of Lego toys. Tobin is the Advocates' Millennium Motivator and poster boy. He is undergoing chemotherapy for brain cancer.

The CACV was organized six years ago by volunteers in Carson City and Douglas, Lyon and Storey counties.

Because of several annual fund-raisers, direct donations and affiliation with Carson-Tahoe Hospital, CACV now has its own office at 808 College Parkway and cancer victims can use the Cancer Resource Center at Elsie and Division streets.

Piel said last year's wine and jazz gala raised about $10,000 for CACV. To approach this year's higher goal, the volunteers sold advertisements for a program for the event, which also included a "keeper card" with an emergency medical reference on one side and contact information for the 17 participating wineries on the other.

"Besides all the Carson City businesses that sponsored us in the program, it was great that Virginia City folks bought a whole page," Piel said. "Next year, we're going to work to get Douglas County in there, too."