BELFAST — It was the largest crowd ever at this year’s Waldo County Triad Auction, which took place in Redman Hall Friday, Sept. 13. 

“We’ve got a great crowd tonight,” Waldo County Sheriff Jeff Trafton said, about the event. Trafton sits on the organization’s board and is actively involved in their many programs. 

The auction raises money for  WC Triad, which was first organized in 2000 with the aim of keeping seniors safe and allowing them to stay in their homes as long as possible. 

The auction featured a little bit of everything, from skis and boots, tools, bicycles, furniture, maple syrup, organic eggs, paintings, and several chatty fowl. With so much variety available there was truly something for everyone. A stained-glass Dalmatian bobble-head light prompted a cheerful volley of bids before being sold for over $50. 

The event began after Donna Talarico went into the Sheriff’s Office “seven or eight years ago,” and said she was thinking about doing an auction to raise money for Triad. Talarico organized the logistics of the event, including collecting the items for auction and has done so ever since. 

“Donna came to me one day at the Sheriff’s Office seven or eight years ago and said, ‘hey I want to do a fundraising auction for Triad.’ I said ‘wow’ - it was a great idea, and she has done this faithfully every year since. She has raised literally tens of thousands of dollars for Triad over the years,” Trafton said. 

Waldo County Triad was formed under Sheriff Robert Jones, and according to Trafton, is one of the few remaining Triads in the state. 

“Every county, at one point, had a Triad chapter,” he said. 

“What Triad is, it’s a  group of social services agencies that serve senior citizens. It’s also comprised of senior citizen volunteers and then also law enforcement agencies, and we all come together,” Trafton said. 

“Our real goal is to help senior citizens feel safe and secure in their homes. We don’t want anybody to be afraid in their homes, so our programs are all geared around that premise, to help seniors, and also to help them stay in their homes longer.”

The auction is Triad’s biggest fundraiser of the year, typically bringing in thousands of dollars that go towards the many programs - all of them free - offered by the group. 

Some of the programs Triad provides includes the Carbon Monoxide Detector Program, which sees Triad members go to a couple of Waldo County towns per year to provide anyone over age 65 there with a free smoke alarm, smoke detector, carbon dioxide detector, and a house sign. 

The Friendly Caller Program involves Waldo County Regional Communications and involves seniors signing up for a designated daily time to call into WCRC. If the call isn’t received within 15 minutes of their check-in time, one of the dispatchers will try to reach them, if they are still unable to reach them after another 15 minutes, a patrol unit is sent by their home to check on them. 

There is also the Wanderers Program, which is a database of those who may be prone to wandering away.

“It’s all programmed into a template in our system, so if a caregiver calls in and says, she’s missing, we immediately put that out statewide. It’s all ready to go, like an Amber alert, except we call it a Silver alert,” Trafton explained. 

One of Triad’s community programs, the Warm Coat Project, is set to begin for 2019, with donation boxes placed all over Waldo County. The coats donated to this project are available to anyone in need, not just the elderly. This is also true of the Wanderers program. 

Also upcoming is a vehicle safety check set to take place at the vocational school Aug. 15, where students that attend the school will examine any automobile for things that need to be fixed. While the problems won’t be fixed as part of the program, a list of any repairs needed will be provided to the respective driver to enable them to seek out repairs independently.

Erica Thoms can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com