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Woman Walks the Rocks with granddaughter to win contest
Thursday, October 25, 2007

An intimate knowledge of her hometown earned a McKees Rocks woman a Nintendo Wii game system in an Oct. 14 drawing.

Clara Priddy, of Railroad Street, returned correct entries in all nine installments of the Walk the Rocks contest, a Web-based architectural scavenger hunt featuring historic McKees Rocks buildings.

Every two weeks through summer and early fall, the McKees Rocks Community Development Corp. posted on its Web site a close-up photo of some part of one of the town's buildings.

Readers correctly identifying each building got an entry into the final drawing.

"My granddaughter and I looked forward to the every-other-Friday picture, and then we went off to find the building," Ms. Priddy said in an e-mail to Sandy Saban, who organized the contest for the development corporation. "Once we had found the building I would tell her as much as I knew about it."

Ms. Saban said Ms. Priddy was part of a surprisingly large group of "regulars" who entered each installment of the contest, including former residents now in Georgia, Florida and Massachusetts. Overall, she said, 220 people sent in entries.

"I was amazed that people really got into it," Ms. Saban said. "I really got to know these people by e-mail."

She then got to meet many of them at the drawing, held as part of a community festival at the soon-to-be-restored Roxian Theater on Chartiers Avenue. The winning entry was pulled by John Baverso, a McKees Rocks native who is now a South Hills architect.

Mr. Baverso -- who is contributing his skills to another Chartiers Avenue renovation, the Sto-Rox Cultural Arts Center -- donated the game system, which was the contest's grand prize.

Ms. Saban said she is already planning another contest, possibly featuring local businesses. "It was fun, and it got people on the site," she said. "It was really cool."

First published on October 25, 2007 at 6:01 am
Brian David can be reached at bdavid@post-gazette.com or 724-375-6816.
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