Shopping locally paid huge Holiday dividend for the Evans family of Soldotna who collected $1,000 in Chamber Bucks at the December 16th Soldotna Chamber of Commerce meeting. The Unwrap Soldotna promotion included 5 weekly drawings for $25 gift certificates in addition to the $1,000 pay out. “It was our buy local program and Jenna Evans was the lucky winner of $1,000 Chamber Bucks that can be spent at any of our participating 25 locations,” said Michelle Glaves, Soldotna Chamber executive director. “It was a huge surprise to win,” said Jenna Evans, “I put my name in at Hooked on the Bean on K-Beach twice, I’m a local coffee drinker and this will make an over the top Christmas for my daughter Olivia,” she said. “It means there’s more money and more shopping for her do this year and nothing is better than mama shopping with free money,” laughed Jenna’s husband Ethan. Jenna has lived in Alaska all her life and in Soldotna for the last 15 some years she said.

“It’s been a great event with fantastic participation not only from our vendors from the shopping public, the box we drew from was like 4ft X 4ft X 4ft, we didn’t count them but it was packed. I think the message is getting out there that it is important to shop locally and when we spend our money here it all comes back to us not only in the services provided by our non-profits that are supported by local businesses, but the sports teams and other events they support that improve our quality of life,” added Glaves.