Carroll Fire Department is first to host comedians

Kaitlynn Breeden, Staff Writer

The Carroll fire department held a donation event at the town’s auditorium. The event had 28 sponsors, including Pac’N’Save, Stadium Sports, and Wayne Sport and Spine. The evening consisted of a steak dinner, a meat raffle, and comedy performances by Stephanie Hillier and Friends.

The night started off with a steak dinner, sponsored by Pac’N’Save. There was also a meat raffle, where you would donate $1, $2, $3, or $5 each round. Some of the things they were raffling including chickens, hams, steak, shrimp and even filet mignon.

In between the meat raffles, the comedians took turns doing their sets. Stephanie Hillier introduced her friends who were going to perform, as well as herself.

Andrew Coniglio made jokes about growing up as a second generation Mexican-American living in an Omaha suburb. Skyler Bolks was the second comedian to perform. Bolks is from Yankton, SD and is a six-time winner of the Sioux Falls Funniest Comic award. He performs all over the Midwest, and made jokes ranging from the disadvantages of being 6’8 to jokes about his dating life.

Hillier wrapped up the event with her own set. She made many jokes about the differences of people in her hometown Detroit, MI, to people in Nebraska.

Carroll has had many different fundraisers over the years to help raise money for the statio

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“They do a fundraiser every year for different stuff, they also do a pancake and omelet feed. They got this raffle idea from Omaha. This is probably one of the very few departments around here that has very big community support. It’s not just Carroll, it’s Wayne, Winside and Stanton.

This fundraiser is just for Carroll,” said resident Sarah Noel.

This isn’t the first fundraiser the Carroll fire station has held, but it is the first one with comedians.

“We have monthly meetings that we go through. Last New Year’s we had Dueling Pianos, and we kind of go off of years past and experience and try and figure out what things worked and what things didn’t,” said volunteer firefighter Kelyn Roberts.

Despite being located in a small town, the station still managed to get four comedians to help support the fundraiser.

“Actually [booking the comedians] was pretty easy. We just wanted to try something different and came up with a few different ideas and came across comedians. They were booked for certain dates, but we just had to choose a date that was for our liking and we went from there,” said Roberts.