McGirr brothers on ABC News 10 broadcast Friday, June 19
By Roni Java
Two Quincy brothers who have currently donated $1,000 in free food to the Quincy CAN Food Bank through their volunteer project to redeem Safeway Monopoly sweepstakes tickets will be featured on Sacramento television station ABC News 10 this Friday, June 19.
Tune in for the 5 and 6 p.m. news broadcasts to see Tysen and Skylar McGirr in a segment about hometown heroes who are helping their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The young men came up with their “Kids Helping Kids” project in 2019 to prevent Plumas County families from going without groceries. They collected 2,400 Monopoly game pieces that year, which helped them donate about $150 in free food to the local Community Action Network (CAN) Food Bank.
This year, with help from donations collected by friends, family, neighbors, businesses, Plumas District Hospital and even total strangers, Tysen and Skylar opened more than 9,000 tickets and redeemed a total of just over $1,000 in coupons for free food that they donated to CAN again.
Plumas News has published three stories about the McGirr brothers’ project since 2019. Reporter John Bartell of ABC News 10 heard about their efforts and contacted the family to arrange a local profile that will air this week.
Due to the COVID-19 cornonavirus pandemic, the TV station was unable to send a reporter in person, so Plumas News helped the boys with video footage, interviews and photography.
While assisting ABC News 10, an unexpected obstacle arose at the proverbial 11th-hour. Actually, it was more like midnight on Sunday, June 14.
One final, crucial piece of video footage was too large to be uploaded to Sacramento using regular, local home Internet connections. The bandwidth was just too slow (as many mountain residents will attest to).
To the rescue — on June 15, Plumas News reached out to Katie Bagby, owner of the Quincy Collective downtown with its high-speed Internet for remote workers and business services
Bagby saved the day by making her wifi service available for the video upload project. The final footage, a 16-minute interview with Tysen and Skylar (that will be edited), took 27 minutes to upload and made the whole news feature project a success. Thank you, Katie!
Editor’s Note: Though Roni Java is too modest to admit it, she is the person who shot the video footage, coordinated with John Bartell and the family, and worked with Katie Bagby to make this possible.
