Warroad eighth-grader collects over 72,000 pop tabs for charity

In the summer of 1995, I worked a three month internship at The Warroad Pioneer, which I'm sorry to say has since ceased operation. This was the first professional newspaper that I worked for in my career, and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. I had only worked at Bemidji State University's newspaper for about a year and half before landing the internship. At The Pioneer I gained experience in sports, feature, beat and government reporting. I designed pages, took and developed photographs and was responsible for community relations. The best part is that I remain friends with the owners nearly 30 years later.

July 18, 1995

By Devlyn Brooks

In the last two years, the Warroad Middle School has collected enough pop tops from aluminum drinking cans to net the Ronald McDonald House in Fargo about $5,000. A large part of this effort has been donated by soon-to-be ninth-grader Michelle Milne.

Milne has collected 72,600 of the pop tabs for her class in the last two years. At the going rate, corporate sponsors offer the Ronald McDonald House 1 cent for each tab. So Milne has earned $726 for the charity herself.

Each year the Middle School hosts a contest to see which class can collect the most tabs. The first year, Leroy Strand's class won the contest, largely in part because of Milne's 45,000 tabs. This year Janet Grove's class won the contest, despite Milne's 27,000 tabs for Strand's class.

Milne said that her secret was contacting all her aunts, uncles and other relatives to collect for her. She said that people her mother babysits for also helped her out.

One time, Milne had seven family members out in a pasture helping her tear off tabs from cans. The people her mother babysit for keep all their cans in a pasture, and so Milne needed to get those tabs popped off. She coaxed her relatives into helping her pick them off. Her mother said that the horses in the pasture looked like they were wondering what was going on.

The first year Milne brought the tabs to school, she carried them in a five gallon pail, and this last year she brought them to school in a 25-pound dog food bag. "Those things are really heavy," she said.

Milne's career total for pop tabs will end at 72,000 though, because she will be in ninth grade this fall, and the ninth grade is not involved in the contest.

However, Milne's mother said that they were going to make the collecting a family tradition because she has a niece that will soon be in the Middle School.