Courtesy of Red Cross.

I, like all of you, have witnessed the news footage from Haiti over the past few weeks.  Total devastation.  You can’t help but be moved by the images in the press.

As I was deliberating what we should do as a company, several of our employees had similar thoughts.  Devesh Kumar, a driver from Miller Delivery Kitchen, was the first to approach me about what Pagliacci could do as a company.  The whole Sand Point Delivery Kitchen crew talked about donating their tips to aid relief efforts.  Jason Cheung, the University Pizzeria General Manager, sent out an email to all of our managers asking if their crew was interested in donating tips for a day and if Pagliacci would match their donations.  Our crew really wanted to help and so did I.

Last Friday we decided that this Thursday, January 28^th, we would donate all of our profits to the Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund.  We are also matching all of our employee contributions.  In addition, we are working with our vendors to get them to donate the food and packaging that we use that day to help support our effort.

A big thanks to our friends out there broadcasting, printing, blogging, posting, tweeting and just simply talking about this event to help spread the word.  And thank you for ordering pizza on Thursday!

We are always supportive of our talented crew in their artistic, athletic and intellectual pursuits, whatever they may be. One of our employees who has worked for the corporate office for over 14 years in accounting has impressed us with her zeal for writing. Erna Mueller won the 2009 Good Read competition by A Woman’s Write with her outstanding entry, How to Find Your Inner Dog.

In the story, stubborn, tough-guy cop Spencer Watley bites the dust only to find himself stuck outside the gates of heaven. Spencer is given a second chance to redeem his callous existence as a human, but this time he’ll have to be a K-9 partner to a young, strong-willed teenager named Justin. Spencer’s job is to help Justin learn to love and trust adults, but it’s not easy. They also have to stand up to the killers and cyber hackers threatening to take advantage of innocent citizens.

In the beginning of this book’s development Erna had indented for it to be a screenplay ― the screenplay won an award from the Hollywood International Film Festival and was also given award recognition from the Hollywood Script Writing Institute. How to Find Your Inner Dog is Erna’s first completed work after ten years of late night writing sessions and many competition submissions. This triumph gets her one step closer to landing a great publishing deal.