A cup of joe and a classic car with the MLPD
Moses Lake Police Department officers Chase Pitt and Brad Zook with K9 Rex at the Cops, Cars and Coffee gathering on Saturday morning. The gathering was a fundraiser for the BlueBridge program, which provides MLPD officers with prepaid credit cards to help people in need.
Charles H. Featherstone
Classic cars on display in the Moses Lake Civic Center parking lot during the Moses Lake Police Department's Cops, Cars and Coffee fundraiser Saturday morning.
Restore City Church Pastor and Moses Lake Police Department Chaplain Mike Alvarado with a big cup of coffee during the Cops, Cars and Coffee fundraiser on Saturday morning. Alvarado’s church provided free donuts for the fundraiser after the MLPD announced it was a ”bring your own donut” event.
MOSES LAKE — For Rob Roemer, the reasons for being out in the parking lot across from the Moses Lake Civic Center at 8 a.m. on a Saturday were self explanatory.
“Who doesn’t like coffee and donuts?” he said.
Roemer stood next to the open hood of his 1971 Plymouth Valiant Scamp, which he’s cleaned up and kept in fairly good condition. It’s one of several cars displayed by members of the Classic Car Club of Moses Lake (including a 1948 Kaiser) and the Diverse Society Car Club as part of a Moses Lake Police Department’s Cops, Cars and Coffee fundraiser for the BlueBridge Program, which allows individual police officers to help people in need of everything from a meal to a place to stay.
It was a bring-your-coffee event, with The Favored Farmhouse — located just on the other side of the alley from the civic center parking lot — donating a portion of the proceeds from every cup of coffee sold Saturday morning to help the program, according to MLPD Chief Kevin Fuhr, with the MLPD also accepting donations to help with the program.
“That's what today is all about,” Fuhr said.
However, Restore City Church decided it was too much to ask people to bring their own donuts as well. So volunteers from Restore City Church handed out free donuts as well.
“I love being involved with the community,” said Mike Alvarado, who pastors Restore City Church with his wife Mary and is also an MLPD chaplain. “And when the guys put out the announcement on Facebook that there wasn’t going to be donuts, I thought it would be cool to just provide that need.”
Alvarado said he’s been a chaplain with the MLPD since 2006, when he was asked by the department because they were looking for clergy who could speak Spanish.
“We’re primarily working with officers helping the community, sometimes we do death notices, sometimes we help with grieving people who are struggling in the community,” Alvarado said.
“If there's an emergency, sometimes we're called out to go provide support to victims.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com
