AROUND TOWN: Fundraiser to send autistic kids to surf camp

Patrons of Marie Callender’s restaurant, 600 E. Sahara Ave., who dine between the hours of 3 and 9 p.m. on June 24 will be helping support autistic children of Las Vegas. The restaurant will donate 15 percent of the evening’s receipts to Surfers Healing, a nonprofit organization that seeks to help autistic kids through what is known as surfing therapy.

Surfers Healing, based in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., will use the money collected at Marie Callender’s to send Las Vegas-area children to its Aug. 5 Autism Surf Camp at Pacific Beach in San Diego, one of 14 surf camps the organization will offer this year on California and East Coast beaches. Applications are still being accepted for children to attend the Aug. 5 camp.

Surfers Healing was born more than a decade ago when Southern California surfer Israel Paskowitz took his autistic young son Isaiah surfing and observed that the experience had “a profound impact” on the boy. Paskowitz and his wife, Danielle, founded Surfers Healing to encourage other parents of autistic children to let their kids experience the calming effects of the ocean.

On their Web site, surfershealing.org, the Paskowitzes said Isaiah, who was diagnosed with autism at age 3, suffered from “sensory overload” and that simple sensations in the everyday world could overwhelm him. “The ocean was the one place where he seemed to find respite,” the parents say on the Web site.

Isaiah Paskowitz, now a teenager and an avid surfer, will attend the fundraiser and greet diners at Marie Callender’s, event organizers said.

Also on Wednesday at Marie Callender’s, donated gift baskets will be raffled off to benefit Opportunity Village, the Las Vegas nonprofit organization that helps the mentally challenged. For more information or to make arrangements to donate a gift basket with items such as small toys and gift cards, call Shanea Acebal at 990-1530.
 

— John Maltby/Photo Special to View