A Herricks High School senior’s one-man campaign to give baseball caps to orphans just got a big corporate boost.
Modell’s Sporting Goods announced Monday that it will be donating 1,000 baseball caps to Herricks senior Tyler Cohen’s Caps Count! initiative to spread the versatile caps and good will to orphanages abroad and in the U.S.
“There was no way we couldn’t get involved in such a great thing. It was something we just had to get into,” said John Borrelli, Modell’s community ambassador of Long Island and Queens.
That Caps Count! has its roots in a Long Island community was also attractive to Modells, Borelli said.
So starting Oct. 5 and continuing through Nov. 1, Modell’s stores in Lake Success, East Meadow, Freeport, Oceanside and Douglaston, Queens will display collection bins where customers can drop off caps they’re no longer using. And Modells is offering team weeks coupons with a 15 percent discount on gear that will kick back 5 percent to the Caps Count! charity.
“They’ve really enabled me to take this to a level I never imagined before,” Cohen said.
And just as Modell’s got involved, the New York Yankees also got wind of the effort and donated 30 Yankees caps to the effort
Cohen’s baseball cap idea was sparked two years ago when he was doing volunteer work at an orphanage in Costa Rica and a five-year-old boy snatched his brand new Armour baseball cap. Cohen said his anger abated as he watched the boy, Fernando, smiling broadly under the brim of the cap, playing with it and showing it off to his friends.
Realizing how much the cap meant to the boy, and how many uses disadvantaged kids can find for a cap, Cohen said he reflected on the good fortune in his own life, and all the material things he was attached to and really didn’t need – including that cap.
The experience indirectly led to Cohen’s recent creation of a charity dubbed Caps Count! that collects baseball caps for needy children in South American and other countries where the caps serve multiple functions – including the vital purpose of providing shade from the sun.
“It’s not just an article of clothing to them. They find endless uses for these caps,” Cohen said.
Cohen and Fernando became fast friends. And the following summer, Cohen went on a similar excursion to Ecuador, arranged by 360 Degree Student Travel, which also had set up his week-long stay in Costa Rica.
“He had a chance to meet some kids and make a difference in many of those kids’ lives,” said Lindsay Ebert, trip director for 360 Degrees, which also is supporting the caps campaign
The ecstatic reaction of those kids was enough to convince Cohen he was on to something that could become even bigger – and Caps Count! was born early last month.
And it’s getting legs as quickly as Cohen can tell his story.
Cohen told Diane Colonna, regional director of Special Olympics New York about it during a two-week internship this summer in which he helped the athletes and worked on a golf outing fundraiser in the organization’s Deer Park offices. That resulted in the Special Olympics New York also collecting caps for Cohen’s cause and spreading the word.
Laura Hauser, marketing director for Moritt Hock & Hamoff, a legal firm in Garden City, heard about the program from Bob Cohen, Tyler’s father, and her company is on the Caps Count bandwagon too.
“We’re just looking to support kids who are trying to make the world a better place,” Hauser said.
Herricks Board of Education members Jim Gounaris and Nancy Feinstein were looking pleased as they heard Cohen’s story during a press event at Modell’s at the Lake Success Mall on Monday.
“We’re proud of him. He’s a smart boy. He came up with a cause and he ran with it,” Gounaris said.
And Cohen said he’s far from done seeking more sponsors as the campaign for his disarmingly simple concept continues.
“Everyone has caps. If I can just ask people for their caps, it’s going to bring smiles all over the world,” he said.
