Four-year-old Kimberly Rodriguez loads her bucket with plastic eggs. Photo by Mike Donahue

By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

In the blink of an eye — or about two minutes, depending on who was counting — an army of youngsters swooped across the Clark County Fairgrounds during the annual Logandale Easter egg hunt last Thursday and cleaned up more than 9,000 plastic eggs.

It had taken almost two hours for Clark County Parks and Recreation Department workers Gail Lindsay and Teresa Briggs to scatter the brightly colored eggs across three acres of grass before the 1,000 bucket- and bag-toting kids descended like a ravaging swarm of insects.

While the happy horde of youngsters was expected by county employees who had watched the kids assemble on the fairgrounds’ sidewalks for at least an hour before the Easter egg hunt, its mad dash across the lawn came as an unexpected surprise even to John Stastny, parks and rec supervisor, who actually gave the go-ahead to go for the gold.

For nearly 30 minutes, Stastny had been verbally holding the mass of kids at bay using a loudspeaker. Every few minutes he would announce the time remaining before the start of the 10:30 a.m. hunt, warning youngsters not to jump the gun.

“I was being scrupulously careful about everything I said on the loudspeaker,” Stastny laughed. “I didn’t want to start something I couldn’t stop. At exactly 10:30 I wanted to wait for one more minute just to be on the safe side when I noticed some stragglers coming in. I hollered out, ‘Hurry up. It’s almost time to GO’ and it was like a bomb went off. All those kids were suddenly racing for the eggs.”

In a pandemonius millisecond, the giggling, screaming youngsters ran, grabbed and scavenged across three acres of fairgrounds lawn in a wide-eyed synchronous dance that scoured the ground of nearly everything but grass and trees. The Easter egg hunt areas was divided into three parts, one for infant to three years old, one for four to seven and one for eight to 11 years old, and each part was stripped of eggs in what seemed like a heartbeat.

Only late-comers were left empty-handed. Most kids ended the race with piles of halved plastic egg shells and small toys, candies and shinning gold coins that had been hidden inside the oval containers. Some lucky scavengers discovered valuable numbered eggs they redeemed for special prizes and toys including stuffed animals, soccer balls, yo-yos, dolls and other treasures.

Many of the Easter egg hunt participants arrived early at the fairgrounds and participated with Cappalappa Family Resource Center representatives in the “Pinwheels for Prevention Campaign,” a statewide public awareness event designed to bring public awareness to child abuse and neglect in communities across the Silver State.

Kids from all over Moapa Valley worked at tables to carefully mark, cut out and fold small blue pinwheels that will hang in the Cappalappa center as a reminder of the devastation of child abuse and neglect.

“April is child abuse prevention month we’re making pinwheels to promote awareness and remind everyone how important it is to make children a priority in our community,” said Tami Kostner, Cappalappa client services case worker

During April more than 25,000 pinwheels will be planted in front of courthouses, schools and public and private agencies like Cappalappa to generate awareness about what can be done to prevent child abuse.