3/14/2006 5:00:00 PM For Mandi, Zoie and 70 other kids each year –
Bull auction raises $12,000 for children’s safety foundation
Special to the Review
A special auction during Cattlemen’s Weekend in Chino Valley March 4 raised $12,000 for The Zoie Foundation, a Kansas-based children’s safety organization.
Dick and Kim Michael of Paulden donated a bull that Gonzo and Linda Gonzales of Kirkland bought for $6,000. Auction owners Richard and Janet Smyer donated $2,000, and $2,500 came from Delbert and Jenny Applebeem also of Chino Valley. Several other community members also donated to round out the charitable $12,000 total.
Foundation President Britt Gates from Anthony, Kansas, and the Michaels are bound together by the shared tragedy of the deaths of their daughters in separate power window strangulations. Two-and-a-half-year-old Zoie Beth Gates died Nov. 3, 2001 when she leaned out a parked pick-up window to pet a dog and activated the power window’s up-switch. Eighteen-month-old Mandi Michael accidentally rolled herself up in a power window in her family’s vehicle while on the family’s ranch May 20, 2004.
“I am blown away by the generosity of the Michaels and the Chino Valley community,” Gates said. “There is no loss like the loss of a child. The support the community is showing the Michaels and my family brings an encouragement and a joy that is unexplainable in the face of unending grief.”
Gates started The Zoie Foundation in January 2003 to help raise awareness and educate parents and caregivers about the dangers of power windows.
“I am a safety-conscious mom,” Gates said. “I read everything I could, checked product recalls and followed expert advice about child-proofing my home and correctly using and installing car seats. No where did I ever read anything about how many children were being maimed and killed by power windows. Until I researched it, I thought my family was the only one.”
The Centers for Disease Control reported in the late 1990s that more than 500 emergency room visits a year were due to power window injuries to children younger than age six. As of January 2006, more than 70 children have died across the United States.
“The numbers don’t seem high until it is your own child, or the child of someone you know. One is too many,” Gates said, “especially when you learn that the auto-reverse technology to save these lives has been available since the mid-1980s and is widely used on American-made cars produced for sale overseas.”
The technology would cause the windows to bounce back when they encounter an obstruction, much like garage doors and elevators. Gates says that many European countries have higher safety standards which have required U.S. auto makers to produce cars with this technology for European consumers.
The Zoie Foundation successfully petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2003 to require U.S. automakers to implement power window switches, which a person could not accidentally activate by standing, kneeling or leaning on them. All cars produced for sale in the U.S. must implement the switches no later than 2007.
“Now that we are assured that the safer switches will be used, we are focusing our efforts on auto-reverse technology,” Gates said. There is legislation pending in both the Senate (S. 1948) and the House (HR 2230) which would require the technology on all cars. It is currently available on many luxury models. Research shows 89 percent of Americans would pay the average $50 more a car to have the technology on their family vehicles.
