FRIENDSWOOD, Texas—When Carla Stinson, of Friendswood, beat breast cancer a few years ago, she got back on her feet and started walking.
She finished two Susan G Komen walks. Each one was 60 miles long, and required Stinson to raise more than $2,000 to participate.
To raise money, she spent hundreds of dollars on nearly 50 flamingos. She placed them in her friends’ yards in a fundraising effort known as "flocking."
“The birds get thrown in the back of my SUV and I drive to the next house, sneak around before the sun comes up and put the birds in a yard,” she said. “It’s something that takes quite a bit of time and effort.”
Over the years, the flamingos helped her raise thousands of dollars.
But now, they have broken beaks and bent legs. During a recent flocking, a vandal tore them up.
“I’d say that 80 percent of them were just destroyed,” Stinson said. “Idle hands, idle minds.”
She now worries she may be short on funds to walk later this year.
She also worries she will lose training time as she fixes her flock.
And yet, it is still far from the most disheartening part.
“The people that suffer are the folks that don’t get the benefit of the money being raised,” she said.
It is money that Stinson may now have to find some other way
