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It’s that time of year again! Northcoast Children’s Services programs all around the county are painting up rocks all pretty and hiding them out in the world for you to find … because why?

Because it’s fun! Because it’s spring! And maybe also, a little bit, because they’d like you to be aware of their program, and of little kiddos in general.

The Outpost’s Stephanie McGeary wrote about last year’s rock hunt at this link, and took some pictures of the rocks too. This year, NCS’ Christy Synder joins our John Kennedy O’Connor to tell us about all things rock hunt in her own voice. Video above, transcript below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, welcome to another Humboldt Conversation. I’m really pleased to say today we’re here with Christy Snyder, who’s the group manager with Northcoast Children’s Services. Christy, welcome to Humboldt Conversations.

CHRISTY SNYDER:

Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

O’CONNOR:

Lovely to meet you. Now, you’ve got a really exciting event coming up, tell us a bit about this.

SNYDER:

You know, we are always looking for exciting ways to recruit for our programs, which are preschool programs and home base, zero to five. And we last year started rock painting. I have a rock. So we paint these rocks and we place them in all the communities in Humboldt and Del Norte County. And then we want families to find the rocks, anyone to find the rocks. Call us — and on the back will be our phone number, so that you’ll be able to call us — and we’ll put you in a drawing for a gas card, a $50 gas card, which isn’t much this day and age. And that won’t go far, but it’s a little bit.

O’CONNOR:

It goes quite a long way actually, 50 bucks is a full tank. Almost. So we’re here in Arcata, this is obviously where the main office is, but these are going to be everywhere in Humboldt.

SNYDER:

Yes, we have sites in Garberville, Rio Dell, Willow Creek, Orleans, Eureka, McKinleyville, Arcata. So they’ll be all out there. So look for them in your daily walks or when you’re out and about. Give us a call. It was so fun to talk to the people who found these last year. And I don’t know if anybody, if you’ve looked for rocks, it’s really fun when you find them. And so we wanted to build into that.

O’CONNOR:

Very beautiful. Now, who actually makes the rocks themselves and who does the painting?

SNYDER:

Every site has instructions to do some rocks with their staff. Some sites are doing it with the kids. Sonoma, our Head Start Sonoma site, always does it with the kids and then goes out and puts the rocks out in Eureka and Sonoma Streets, California, Wabash, around their center. And those are kid-drawn rocks, but both staff and children in the schools do them.

O’CONNOR:

Yeah, I mean that’s a particularly beautiful one. How many are going to be out there that people are going to be looking for?

SNYDER:

Gosh, math. I would say we have about 19 or 20 centers participating and I would say each center, it’s about three to eight rocks. So each town could potentially have 10 rocks. A lot.

O’CONNOR:

It’s going to be exciting. Yes. And as you say, just one gift card at the end.

SNYDER:

One gift card, who knows, maybe I’ll have enough in my budget and do two. But it is the exciting part, is doing that raffle and giving out that gift card.

O’CONNOR:

Well, we’ll look forward to it and it’s a very exciting thing and when people find the way to contact us…

SNYDER:

Yeah, I haven’t put the stickers, but we did purchase some waterproof stickers, so it should be okay to put on the back of the road.

O’CONNOR:

Okay, well it’s going to be exciting to find one. I shall be out there looking myself. You should. We’ll look forward to starting the search. Thank you. Christy, great to meet you and thank you for joining us for another Humboldt Conversation. We’ll see you soon.

SNYDER:

All right, bye-bye.