Donations rolling in for Rajesh John Fundraiser Auction

“It’s just exploded. So I mean the sense of community there that we’re seeing is absolutely amazing,” says Turnbull. “You know when we started it we had high hopes obviously we were thinking you know we might get 30 donations and then we can provide a good sum of change to the family. And now we’re up over 60-70 donations and they’re still rolling in.”

Donations are being accepted until noon on Thursday. The auction will go live Saturday at 11 a.m. and run for 48 hours. The money raised will go directly to John’s wife Anu to help cover the costs of his funeral and other family needs.

Well known in the fishing community, many of the items are related to the sport, like equipment, apparel and fishing trips. There are also household items, restaurant gift certificates and more.

Turnbull says the range of what’s been donated shows how wide John’s reach in the community was. Turnbull says in the past week he’s spoken with many of John’s current and former co-workers and members of the cricket community, of which John was a large part.

“Some of those guys, like, they would remind you of yourself and you could see just the way that John impacted them with the way that they would tell you stories that it wasn’t just a few people John touched it was literally the entire community and it really shows on the auction page as well as the GoFundMe.”

Turnbull counts himself among those whose lives John impacted in a positive way. Their friendship started on Facebook fishing groups.

“It’s very common for anglers to just start talking before they actually meet. So that’s how I originally met John,” he says. “We eventually found the time to meet up and fish some sturgeon and some different species so yeah I knew John personally.”

“This one hits home.”

Turnbull encourages everyone to join the Facebook auction page to donate or to bid on the items.

by Chris Brown

Donations rolling in for Rajesh John Fundraiser Auction

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