Galentines Gather for Sweet Celebration Benefiting Dec My Room

Galentines Gather for Sweet Celebration Benefiting Dec My Room

Kendall and Susan Plank, Noel Wise, Anna Osborn, Michelle Koskie

MORE THAN 140 lovely ladies showed up at Tootsies to shop, sip and celebrate Dec My Room, the local nonprofit responsible for personalizing and decorating hospital rooms for pediatric and young-adult patients.


Dec My Room founders, mother-daughter duo Susan and Kendall Plank, and event chairs Jennifer Cope and Marie Flanigan mingled with the "galentines" two days before V-Day. After early-morning browsing of pop-ups and trunk shows at Tootsies, the well-heeled crowd strutted over to PostScript HTX, awash in pink, as always.

Here, the ladies sat down for a beautiful luncheon. At each seat, guests found a butterfly, which was raised during the "paddles-up" portion of the day. Together with an exciting raffle, the event raised nearly $120,000 for Dec My Room.

Ally Shell and Nora Jarrard

Carson Sherman, Rebecca Thomas, Lauren Gray

Tori Kuykendall, Stacey Lindseth

Charlotte Martingano, Anna Osborne

Michelle Froehlich, Diane Nolen, Denise Tinkham, Fenche Shen

Cherie Lindley, Abby Vanegas

Melissa Sugulas, Estella Cockrell, Rebecca Thomas, Melissa Juneau , Traci Young

Donae Chramosta and Donna Lewis

Marie Flanigan and Jennifer Cope

Elizabeth Abraham , Sydney Goss, Laura Thompson

Kelli Tumey, Noel Wise

Elysa Nelson, Claire Jackson, Sylvie Kampshoff

Christina Green, Whitney Kuhn Lawson

Food

David Ansell, Bennie Flores Ansell, Thuy Tran and James Tiebout

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Cheech Marin reflecting outside of The Cheech (photo by David Fouts)

WHEN YOU TALK to Los Angeles-born actor Cheech Marin, regardless of how serious the subject, you can’t help but smile. His pop-culture presence is infused with an astute awareness of politics and history, and a “can do, make do, find a way to move ahead” spirit he connects to the word “Chicano,” a derogatory term that came to signify resilience, creative thinking, and social consciousness. “My dad, who died at age 93, always described himself as a Chicano, because it described him,” says Marin.

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