Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories Donates Nearly 15,000 Books to Children in Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco Thanks to Sunday's Performance at Sonoma Raceway

Business Wire, June 28, 2004

SONOMA, Calif. -- Petty Enterprises and Cheerios made it a storybook finish at Infineon Raceway in Sunday's Dodge/Save Mart 350 NASCAR Nextel Cup race.

By completing all 110 laps of Sunday's race, Jeff Green and the #43 Cheerios Dodge team earned a donation of 4,730 books for families. Cheerios had pledged a 10,000-book bonus if Green finished in the top 10.

"Because of the effort Jeff and the Cheerios Dodge guys made all day, we're going to go ahead and donate all of the books," said Greg Zimprich, a spokesman for Cheerios.

So, a total of 14,730 books will be donated to families in the San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento areas by Cheerios and First Book, a national children's literacy program. First Book's Advisory Boards in Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco will help get the books out to local nonprofits serving children and families in need.

The books-per-lap donation is part of the ongoing Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories(R) program, which gets books into the hands of children. More than 60 percent of low-income families have no books at all in their homes for their children.

"This makes our day a lot sweeter knowing a lot of kids are going to be getting new books through the Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories program," Green said. "I'm almost as excited about that as I am about what this Cheerios Dodge team did today on the track."

Over the past two years, through its Spoonfuls of Stories program, Cheerios has donated $1 million to First Book, and has distributed more than 10 million books to children across the country.