Former MVHS Foreign Exchange Student Sayo Yamada.

Mack Lyon yearbook students will be holding a raffle to help in the Red Cross effort to aid earthquake survivoirs in Japan. The students were inspired in this cause by a personal experience of their teacher Cyndi Brinker. Ms. Brinker and her husband Randy hosted foreign exchange student, Sayo Yamada, last year. Yamada lives in Tokyo, Japan. Sayo, and graduated from Moapa Valley High School last year. She lives only 175 miles from a nuclear power plant affected by the recent earthquake.

“I was at school when big earthquake happened,” Sayo told Brinker. “But aftershocks come everyday and I can’t sleep well.”

The Brinkers have spent the past weeks concerned for Sayo’s safety. “Randy and I worry about her every day,” said Cyndi. “But thank goodness for Facebook! If I can just get a message from her every day, I won’t worry so much.”

This experience has caused Brinker to make an appeal to the yearbook editors at Lyon to try to help in a small way with humanitarian efforts in Japan. “They suggested we raffle off two yearbooks,” Brinker said. “Each one is $50, so they were being VERY generous.”

Raffle tickets are $1 each or six tickets for $5. The raffle will run through March 25.

“If people in the community would like to help us, they can send a donation to the school on behalf of the yearbook,” Brinker said. “If they wish to buy tickets, but don’t want a yearbook, Mr. Adams has graciously volunteered to have his name put on the tickets. If his name is drawn, a yearbook will be donated to a worthy student that wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford a yearbook.”