South Charleston, W.Va. - Officer Tony Messer is not only known in the community he serves in South Charleston, West Virginia as a K9 officer passionate about community policing, but he has also gained worldwide attention as a social media influencer promoting his mission to “Bridge the Gap.”
Friday night Tony, known as “Officer Messer”, throughout his content creation community, sat down in front of his computer at home intending to raise $12,500 in three hours to purchase one hundred bicycles for one hundred kids in his community for Christmas through his non-profit organization, Serve First Foundation. Online viewers could donate to the cause by purchasing $5 increments to be entered into a PC giveaway drawing.
“I called my manager, Mikey, and said, man, last year we raised ten thousand, but this year we have more kids on our list to buy for, so do you think we can meet our goal during the stream? I don’t want to disappoint anyone,” said Officer Messer.
Nothing was disappointing about what happened next. The online viewers met Officer Messer’s goal within fifteen minutes of the start of the Twitch and TikTok LIVE stream. The three-hour planned event had to stop taking entry donations one hour and forty minutes into the stream for Arionna, Tony’s wife and President of the Serve First Foundation, and Ryan Caplinger, Director of The Academy Role Play gaming server, tallied, and verified the 5045 entries.
To end the event that raised twenty-seven thousand dollars, Ghost Lifestyle, who sponsors Officer Messer as one of their Gaming Legends, donated three merchandise giveaways that were drawn from the list of donors before the Serve First Foundation gave the grand prize of the desktop PC to the random drawing winner from British Columbia, Canada.
Deny Doss, co-owner of The Academy Role Play server and Serve First Foundation board member, was not surprised watching the overwhelming support by the thousands of viewers.
“This community, the people who play on our server, the people who watch Tony and our other content creators, the people who believe in our mission to bridge the gap between first responders and the communities we live in are unmatched. Two weeks ago, this community raised twelve thousand dollars that went directly to Gamers Outreach to support kids hospitalized in hospitals across the nation. They turned around and did this. It is humbling and exciting that together we are making such a positive impact,” said Doss.
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