Vol. 121 No. 38
THE BACK MOUNTAIN'S NEWSPAPER SINCE 1889
November 25 - December 1, 2012
'eThe
PatrASs Post.
WILKES-BARRE, PA.
www.mydallaspost.com
AN EDITION OF THE TIMES LEADER
Facebook helped the Chinikaylo family find Lillie.
Lillie's home - thanks to Facebook
By MEGAN SCHNEIDER
.mschneider@mydallaspost.com
One local family recently
learned that Facebook can be a
valuable tool in time of need.
On Halloween night, the
Chinikaylo family from
Church Road in Lehman
Township, lost Lillie, its 3-
year-old Border Collie/Labra-
dor mix.
Seventeen-year-old Vladi-
mir Chinikaylo had the family
dog in the yard and made the
mistake of setting off fire-
crackers. Lillie was frightened
and ran off. That was about 8
p.m. and a search began, last-
ing well in to the night.
“You wake up in the morning and it’s like a bad
dream and then you think, oh man, my dog really is
missing.”
Anna Chinikaylo
Lehman Township
“The first thing I did was to
put it on Facebook,” said Anna
Chinikaylo, telling how she
posted a picture of Lillie and
asked for people to keep their
eyes out for her.
Then the family took to the
streets, on foot and by car,
armed with flashlights on a
frantic search for its pet. The
family lives near the Hunst-
ville Dam and searched the en-
tire area. According to Chini-
kaylo, family members went
from Hillside Farms towards
Penn State Lehman campus,
up and Down Huntsville Road
and everywhere in between.
Chinikaylo said Lillie knows
where she lives because she
frequently goes for walks and
never with a leash.
“She is very well trained,”
Chinikaylo said. Lillie doesn’t
wear a collar so there would
be no way to identify her. The
family was very worried about
its dog, especially given the
extreme cold on that night,
and came home around mid-
night empty-handed.
“You wake up in the morn-
ing and it’s like a bad dream,”
Chinikaylo said, “and then you
think, oh man, my dog really
is missing.”
But what the family didn’t
know that night was that Lillie
had been rescued almost im-
mediately after leaving her
yard. A Domino’s Pizza deliv-
ery driver had seen Lillie on
the road near the Huntsville
See FACEBOOK, Page 7
Going where
Delp Is needed
By MEGAN SCHNEIDER
mschneider
@mydallaspost.com
Thanks to support from Mi-
sericordia University students
and alumni, New York and New
Jersey residents are not left
alone to pick up pieces from the
devastation caused by Hurri-
cane Sandy.
Representatives from Miser-
icordia University spent the
weekend of Nov. 9 delivering re-
lief supplies and lending a help-
&: hand to residents of New
York’s Staten Island. Donations
of food, water, cleaning supplies
and other items were collected
at the university, loaded into a
van and driven to Staten Island.
Jim Miller, a senior in the Oc-
cupational Therapy program at
Misericordia, didn’t realize
right away that the group was in
the damaged area. “The main
street seemed fine but then you
looked down a side street and
there would be a boat in the
middle of a street,” he said.
“It was so bad,” said Kellyann
Gough, Misericordia student
from Chester, New York. Gough
is originally from Staten Island
“They were still in
shock. | just don't think
it hit them yet that
their entire homes
were gone."
Caroline Landen
Misericordia sophomore
and has family affected during
the storm. “I've been to the area
we were at hundreds of thou-
sands of times and it was very
upsetting,” she said about hur-
ricane damage.
Gough said, thankfully, her
family members were not put
out due to storm damage but
their power was just returned
late last week.
The students described the
mess left in the wake of Sandy.
They talked about homes caked
with mud. “You would see a
glove on the sidewalk just cov-
ered with debris,” said Gough.
A dog was crated outside be-
cause his owners feared if he
were indoors he might become
ill from eating the debris.
Police, fire companies and
See HELP, Page 7
Misericordia University students Caroline Landen, left, and
Kellyann Gough rip water-soaked drywall out of a home on
Staten Island.
BILL TARUTIS PHOTOS/ FOR THE DALLAS POST
Seven-year-old Georgina Pugh, of Tunkhannock, carries donations from Tunkhannock Assembly of God for Operation Christmas Child
into Cross Creek Community Church as her mom, Hope, watches.
Ensuring all a
happy and
festive holiday
By MEGAN SCHNEIDER
mschneider@mydallaspost.com
Samaritan’s Purse, an interna-
tional relief organization based in
Boone, N.C, is being helped in its
mission this holiday season by
Back Mountain residents. The
far-reaching charitable hand of
the organization’s holiday drive,
dubbed Operation Christmas
Child, gets support from smaller,
more local roots.
Cross Creek Community
Church on Carverton Road in
Shavertown is a relay center for
this year’s collection, marking
the third year the local church
has been a collection center for
the Back Mountain.
Operation Christmas Child isa
shoebox collection. Participants
fill a shoebox or small plastic tote
with items for children ages 2-14
in countries all over the world.
The boxes are stuffed with neces-
sities such as soap, toothpaste,
toothbrushes, bandages and
clothing. Some of them include
small toys, hard candies, note-
books and pencils or other small,
non-food and non-liquid items.
Each family or organization
can stuff its box with whatever its
members would like. Many of the
local churches that participate in-
clude a letter from the church to
the child. Some have even gotten
thank-you notes from the recip-
ients.
Once the boxes are filled, they
are taken to a relay center, like
Cross Creek, where they are
packed for shipping.
“Our goal is to put at least 14 in
Laura Sarnak, left, of Exeter, and Robert and Nancy Bonning, of
Shavertown, box Christmas presents for distribution at Cross
Creek Community Church in Kingston Township.
a shipping box,” said Tammy
Gray, a volunteer at the church.
“The plastic containers are har-
der to pack but I think they have
more value. Kids can use them to
carry water and things like that.”
Gray said church members
heard a story about a young girl
whose village was flooded. Fortu-
nately, the girl’s Bible and her pre-
cious possessions were saved be-
cause she had kept them in a plas-
tic container in which she had re-
ceived gifts.
Jenn Sgori, another volunteer
at Cross Creek, put a paddleball,
toy cars, a toothbrush, tooth
See HOLIDAY, Page 7
09815120079
on