Mercy News article by Judy Peterson - CrabFest

The Los Gatos Rotary Club’s 16th annual all-you-can-eat Crabfest & Auction is just around the corner, only this year the “corner” is in Saratoga.

The crabfest takes place at 6 p.m. Jan. 28 in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 13601 Saratoga Ave. The change from St. Mary’s in Los Gatos was due to a scheduling conflict. The crabfest is the club’s biggest fundraising event of the year and is expected to raise as much as $50,000.

Tickets are on sale now at losgatosrotary.org and are $60 for adults, $20 for children 12 and younger. 

 

The club’s goal is to sell 500 tickets.

“It has grown in recent years, and we had to have an overflow room last year,” co-chairman Neal Mudgett said. “This year, we’ll be able to fit everybody into the gymnasium at St. Andrew’s. That’s important because we don’t want people missing out on our live auction.”

The live and silent auctions are chock-full of bidding opportunities, including weeklong and weekend getaways. “The live auction features a seven-day cruise to Mexico and one week’s lodging in Davos, Switzerland. We also have a week in Kona and a week in San Francisco,” Mudgett said.

Skiers and snowboarders will be particularly interested in a week’s lodging for 10 at a lakefront home in Tahoe.

“We’re also doing an in-home gourmet dinner for 10, and we have pairs of ‘Hamilton’ tickets,” Mudgett said.

The acclaimed Broadway show opens March 10 at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre.

 

Proceeds from the crabfest primarily benefit St. Luke’s Food Pantry in Los Gatos. “They provide food and services to the homeless and our low-income residents,” Mudgett said. “We’ve been helping St. Luke’s for a long time and we have a really good relationship with them.”

Los Gatos Boy Scouts will receive a donation, too, because they’ll be on hand to assist with setup, serving and tear-down.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s also fun and for a good cause,” Mudgett said.

 

The Rotary Club also sponsors Los Gatos High School’s Interact Club, a service club that reflects Rotary’s mission to provide community leadership and support. Interact Club members recently made fleece blankets for the Silicon Valley Pet Project that rescues shelter cats and dogs at risk of being euthanized.

“Several members of the Pet Project attended a Rotary meeting recently, and as we were leaving the meeting, we heard a kitten crying in the ditch between the Los Gatos Lodge and Los Gatos-Saratoga Road,” Rotarian Tina-Orsi-Hartigan said. “It took five of us but we rescued a darling kitten, now named Scout, who was the first recipient of one of the Interact club’s fleece blankets.”

 

Orsi-Hartigan is helping to organize a Jan. 23 fundraiser at Aldo’s restaurants on behalf of the Pet Project. If you order lunch, dinner or takeout at Aldo’s that day, 20 percent of your bill will be donated to the pet project.

 

Aldo’s Cafe is in the Los Gatos Shopping Center at 440 N. Santa Cruz Ave. Aldo’s Ristorante & Bar is in Vasona Station at 14109 S. Winchester Blvd.

Aldo’s owner, Aldo Marescca, has also just opened Shiroi Sushi at the Vasona Station, so the Pet Project fundraiser is good there, too.