HOWELL— Stop & Shop supermarket recently presented a $5,000 check to Catherine Van Pelt of Howell, a winner in Stop & Shop’s Triple Winner charity contest .
Van Pelt was joined by her husband, Chuck, Stop & Shop Howell store manager Meg Scott, and Howell Deputy Mayor William Gotto.
Now in its 21st year, Triple Winner is a fundraising drive in which shoppers at the checkout register can make a contribution to benefit the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to help fight pediatric cancer and search for a cure.
The effort has raised more than $50 million for the cause since 1990 and more than $5 million this year, according to a press release.
Van Pelt, the head teller at the Bank of America branch in Farmingdale, explained that when she contributed to Triple Winner, she thought the Stop & Shop sales associate had handed her a receipt; she did not realize it was a game card until she got home and scratched it off and was floored that she won $5,000.
Van Pelt said her mother-in-law, Jackie Van Pelt, died of brain cancer in 1994. Her sister-in-law and brother-in-law have both survived bouts with cancer.
Aco-worker was successfully treated for breast cancer, another co-worker recently lost her mother to cancer, and a friend’s child is being treated for leukemia.
“Cancer impacts so many families; I don’t think any of us know a family that has not been touched by cancer,” Van Pelt said. “Cancer can be devastating. That is why I always donate. It was just a dollar on my part, and I never imagined I would be rewarded with $5,000.”