When tragedy strikes in a rural community, friends respond.
That’s what happened in the Dallas/Colome, S.D. area on March 27, when a benefit was held for the Kevin Graesser family.
Friends and family came together to raise over $100,000 to help with medical bills for the Dallas, S.D. man, who passed away on February 23 due to cholangiocarcinoma.
Tate and Calli Williams were two of the organizers of the benefit.
It started when the couple, who ranch near Letcher, S.D., were headed home from the Black Hills Stock Show in January.
“We were thinking, what can we do to help the Graessers?” Calli said. “We thought we’d do a heifer raffle from our calf crop. By the time we got to Mitchell, we thought, we can’t just do a raffle. We have to go big.”