By Naheed Rajwani and Tasha Tsiaperas
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — Donations from lemonade stands, change jars at local businesses, a country star-studded concert at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth and other fundraising efforts have totaled nearly $10 million for victims and families of the ambush nearly 11 weeks ago that left five police officers dead and nine others injured in downtown Dallas.
Dinner with the Dallas Cowboys’ Tony Romo and Jason Garrett raised $17,000. Two people paid $25,000 to watch an NBA Mavericks game alongside owner Mark Cuban.
Dallas Police Officers Lorne Ahrens, 48; Michael Krol, 40; Michael Smith, 55; Patrick Zamarripa, 32; and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police Officer Brent Thompson, 43, were killed in the ambush by a lone gunman at the end of a protest march. Nine other Dallas, DART and El Centro College police officers were injured, as well as two civilians.
A massive outpouring of financial support and gifts has arrived from throughout the world through Dallas-area nonprofit groups, ranging from the coins in children’s piggy banks to a local radio station’s auction of sports memorabilia and time with Dallas’ sports stars.
Now, the nonprofits that collected the money face the difficult task of doling it out.
Some will give money directly to the victims’ families, but others are using the donations to pay for mental health services for those affected by the ambush.
The Assist the Officer Foundation, which is run by the Dallas Police Association, has raised more than $5 million for the families of slain and injured officers. And the association says it hasn’t caught up with the counting of donations yet, either.
Friends Landry Nelon, 11, and Lauren Roach, 12, set up a lemonade stand in their northwest Dallas neighborhood a day after the ambush, expecting to make $100. They raised $10,000 in two days.
News organizations wrote about their fundraiser, and people continued to mail them checks after it ended. Last week, the girls donated an additional $10,000 to the Assist the Officer Foundation.
“My heart could explode from pride because they did this themselves,” said Landry’s mother, Kimberly Nelon. “It was from a very pure place of just feeling sad and wanting to do something good, feeling sorry for the families that were impacted.”
The police association’s vice president, Frederick Frazier, said accountants are auditing the funds this week and the foundation’s board will determine how to split the money among the families.
The families of the slain officers will get the majority of the money, and the injured officers will receive the rest. Frazier said divvying up the money is not a decision the foundation wants to rush. The group wants to be fair to those in mourning.
“You can’t bring those loved ones back,” he said.
The Dallas Foundation raised $2 million for its Line of Duty Fund. The money will help the slain and wounded victims’ families and Dallas, El Centro and DART police officers affected by the July 7 ambush, said Dawn Townsend, the foundation’s marketing director.
“We’ve had contributions from $100,000 to $25 to $5 — and everything in between,” Townsend said. “It brought out just the very best of the Dallas community, and really the country.”
Representatives from the Dallas Foundation, the mayor’s office, Dallas police, Dallas Area Rapid Transit and El Centro College plan to meet this month to discuss how money from the Line of Duty Fund will be spent.
Recommendations will be sent to the mayor’s office, the city manager and a member of the foundation’s board of governors — former City Manager Mary Suhm — for approval.
United Way of Metropolitan Dallas’ Unite Dallas Relief Fund raised $1.2 million.
The Dallas Fraternal Order of Police partnered with businesses and community organizations to raise $500,000 for its Dallas Fallen Officer Foundation. Most of the money was raised through sales of black “Pray for Dallas” T-shirts.
The families of the five slain officers will receive $50,000 from the foundation.
The officers injured in the shooting got $25,000 checks from the fund. Sgt. Demetrick Penne, who coordinated the fundraising, said he hopes the money will alleviate the pressure on the officers to return to work.
“This is a special group of officers who were heroes, who were trying to protect those who were protesting them,” Penne said. “They were willing to take a bullet for them.”
The Guns and Hoses Foundation, which supports fallen officers and firefighters, raised $273,000. A large portion of the money came from 105.3 FM The Fan, which worked with Dos Jefes and Nick & Sam’s in July to auction off memorabilia from local sports teams and dinners with sports celebrities.
“We’ve got a 100,000-watt transmitter. You can pick up our radio station in Waco and you can pick it up in Oklahoma,” said The Fan radio personality Ben Rogers, who knew Zamarripa personally. “We’ve always said if you can’t do good with this, then what’s the point?”
After a competitive bidding process, two people ended up paying $25,000 each to sit next to Mavericks owner Cuban at a game. Dinner with Cowboys head coach Garrett, quarterback Romo, linebacker Sean Lee and tight end Jason Witten (who once invited Zamarripa and his police partner to a Cowboys game) fetched $17,000.
Dinner with Cowboys of the past — including Emmitt Smith, Daryl Johnston and Troy Aikman — earned a $19,000 donation.
“Every bit of that (fundraiser) was all emotion, just fueled by emotion,” Rogers recalled. “It was one of those things where you didn’t feel like it was rude to ask something of a superstar.”
Money collected by Guns and Hoses for the ambush victims will be divvied up among the nine injured officers and the families of the five slain officers. The children of the slain officers will get a check on Christmas and another when they graduate high school.
When Rogers heard on Wednesday that Dallas’ nonprofit organizations had raised more than $10 million since the ambush, he seemed floored.
“Oh my God. Really? I had no idea, I did not — wow,” he said. “That’s fantastic. I think they can do a lot of good with that.”
Copyright 2016 The Dallas Morning News