In addition to raising money for the St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children in Queens, Flower Hill resident Chris Savino’s upcoming Cocktails With a Cause fundraiser will seek to promote automobile safety.
An hour-long VIP sponsor reception prior to the Sept. 24 event’s cocktail party and auction will feature the Kansas-based non-profit KidsAndCars.org, for which Savino’s friend, former Village of Munsey Park Trustee Sue Auriemma, has advocated, as its VIP guest organization.
Auriemma became active in car safety awareness in wake of a 2005 non-fatal incident in which she hit her daughter Kate, then 3, while backing out of a driveway.
Savino, an executive director of equity trading at Morgan Stanley, started the event after seeing how chemotherapy treatments improved the condition of a friend’s son whose bout with Leukemia kept him isolated from the other children at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
“I was like, wow, all the things going on in life, it makes you think of how you’d handle that if that was your kid and he was just so inspiring,” he told Blank Slate Media last July. “It really put everything into perspective.”
Since its inception, Cocktails With a Cause has raised more than $850,000 toward
Tickets for Cocktails With a Cause are $200 and may be purchased through the event’s website at stmaryscocktails.org.
The event will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., with the VIP sponsor reception taking place during the first hour, at the Ganesvoort Park Avenue Hotel in Manhattan.
Sponsors include Bank of America and Merril Lynch, among others.
Savino took personal funds he set aside for a vacation to the Caribbean and instead took the money to St. Mary’s Hospital for Children in Bayside, arranging for the patients there to attend a New York Islanders game at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and meet the players during a postgame lunch.
“It was great to get them out of the hospital for a day,” he said. “Some of these kids really have heartbreaking stories, like they get sick and their parents take them to the hospital and don’t come back to pick them up. It’s just touching to give back.”
