PAINTER ACCEPTS A DARE TO HELP FUNDRAISE

Original Art Is Helping The Anti-Drug Program Offered In Langley Schools.

A Langley artist has accepted the dare to help raise money for an
anti-drug education program.

Lori McPhee has donated her painting Playing Safely in the Streets to
help James Kennedy Elementary raise money for activities such as the
Drug Awareness and Resistance Education (DARE) program and the
playground - the extras not funded by the province.

About four years ago, she created her musician motif and has been
doing a series. The style has been described as contemporary with
graphic elements.

Though not a musician herself, the full-time artist always has songs
playing while she works and plans to have her musicians in her life
for as long as she can hold a paint brush. She's sending them to tour
the world, meeting up with famous people such as Oprah, and visiting
prominent landmarks in the Lower Mainland and abroad.

The DARE donation is about two feet by three feet and was done
specially for the program.

"It's to bring awareness," she said.

Sgt. Warren Tomalty works in White Rock, but lives in Langley and
teaches DARE on his own time at the school.

"It's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, DARE programs in
Langley," he said.

Schools are increasingly struggling to find funds for any extras so
he wrote a letter to the children in the course and their parents
asking the kids to find a philanthropic way to raise $5 and asking
their parents for fundraising ideas.

McPhee offered up a piece of her art.

"I thought that was a great idea," Tomalty said.

Her daughter, Jessica Brown, has been in the latest DARE course and
"loves it," McPhee said.

The original art will be auctioned and will be on display at Urban
Art after the DARE graduation next month. He said McPhee has also
been generous in allowing the school to create copies (postcards,
greeting cards and magnets) that will also be sold to the public.
There will also be 15 matted giclee prints for sale, measuring 16 by
20 inches. Bids are being taken on the original painting through the
school and Urban Art from March 12 to June 1.

The smaller items will be for sale at the school, Urban Art and the
Westwind Fine Art Gallery.

Fast approaching is the March 11 graduation ceremony for Tomalty's
latest DARE class. The evening ceremony will include a Township Mayor
Kurt Alberts, RCMP dignitaries and presentations to the students.

Tomalty has taught approximately two dozen DARE classes in Whistler,
Vancouver and Langley since he started nine years ago. While the
program created by an American police officer several years ago has
detractors, he continues because of the feedback he gets from the
students and parents.

Each DARE group has up to a dozen sessions where they learn about
drugs and how to resist the various kinds of pressure young people may face.

"Where else do you get a one on one with a police officer?" he said.

He includes a session with parents to help them watch for telltale
changes in their children. Tomalty had a former addict at a session
and asked her opinion of a program such as DARE. The response was a
wish that something like that had existed when she was a kid because
she knew nothing about how drugs would devastate her health and
pocketbook, he said.