CityView Magazine

air. And I looked down at my reporter’s notebook, now dotted with barbecue sauce, just to make sure that I was indeed at the right place for CityView’s regular feature on a “City Angel.” Because with a group of chefs called the Mother Cluckers, I’m just sayin’. But indeed it was one of those chaotic, surreal – and perfect – days when a group of folks, and more than a few characters, came together to compete in a chicken wing cook-off contest and raise money for a good cause, a non- profit organization called KidsPeace. Right across the street from a rally at the Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership. Beneath the silly hats and chicken costumes were generous souls who donated a Saturday to help children in need of intensive mental health counseling. “These are the kids that are the hard cases,” said Pat Talkington, chairman of the local chapter’s board of associates. “I just developed a real passion for this when it was explained to me. It got me involved, and it got all of these other women involved.” Women like professional chef Mei Parker, who’s particularly handy to have around when it comes time for a cook- off. Parker did some of the cooking, of course, but teams came from across the city. Fayetteville Technical Community College held a cook-off for the cook-off, eliminating teams from its culinary arts program before sending the winning team to the KidsPeace event. Macy’s department store was there and so were Allegra Printing, Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant, Cash Converters, Edwards, Pechmann & Packer accounting firm, the Fayetteville Jaycees, Highland Lumber Company and Reliable Sign Company. Mountainaire Farms donated the chicken. Piedmont Bottling donated drinks. Teams competed for plaques – their very own mounted pair of barbecue tongs – but all of the money raised went directly to KidsPeace. The organization is a private charity that provides behavioral and mental health services to children, toddlers to teens. Founded in 1882, the charity has always helped kids in crisis. It began as an outreach to children orphaned by smallpox and has evolved to become an organization that now provides therapeutic foster care. KidsPeace has chapters up and down the East Coast with three in North Carolina, where it is accredited by The Joint Commission, an independent non-profit that certifies more than 16,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. Two of those chapters happen to be located right here in the Cape Fear region. Brian Rixon is director of both the Fayetteville and Southern Pines offices, splitting his time between counties spanning territory as far east as Fayetteville and as far west as Rockingham and north to the edge of the third office in Raleigh. KidsPeace recently moved its Cumberland County headquarters from Hope Mills to Fayetteville. Between the two offices, here and Southern Pines, about 25 staffers work with almost 150 children, ages 3 to 20. “Some of these kids come from homes of neglect and a history of abuse,” he said. But there are success stories. One teenager is currently being scouted for a college baseball team. Another is about to start culinary school in the fall. Rixon and several of his staff joined other teams in the cook-off. He flipped rows of glazed wings on a hot grill, as other teams labored over secret sauce and handed out wads of paper towels to sticky-fingered samplers. Some teams showed up with little more than a grill while others decorated their booths with potted palms and wore color- coordinated shirts. At the end of the day, The Fayetteville Jaycees walked away with the prize for Best Buffalo Wing. Most Creative went to the Kickin’ Chicks and FTCC captured the People’s Choice award. Judges included Parker, radio personality Jimmy Lewis Jr. and Fayetteville Mayor Tony Chavonne, who declared that day on his blog, “KidsPeace is having their annual chicken wing cook-off today in the parking lot at It’z. I get to judge (i.e. eat) the contest entries. Not a bad gig.” Nope, and not a bad gig for an editor either. CV CityViewNC.com | 67

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