Richie Pallai Jr. Strives to Help Family of Sandy Hook Victim

On December 14, 2012, tragedy struck the peaceful town of Newtown, Conn. when a 20-year-old man went on a shooting rampage in the Sandy Hook Elementary School killing twenty students and six faculty members. One of those students was six-year-old Catherine Violet Hubbard. The Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary is a sanctuary that is being added on to The Animal Center in Newtown, in her memory. NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour driver Richie Pallai Jr. is an animal lover and is trying to help their cause.

“Every year I pick up a charity for the ‘Champions For Charity’ event, which fortunately we won,” said Pallai. “Normally we do something with animals. One of the little girls killed was an animal lover and they’re trying to build an animal sanctuary for her so I wanted to help out. It’s the animal sanctuary I’ve been working with since December right after it happened.”

Pallai grew up less than an hour away from Newtown in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., so he said what happened there really hit close to home for him.

“This happened so close to me,” said Pallai. “I live 45 minutes away so I decided to do something for them.”

Pallai hopes to have some of the family members and staff from the sanctuary come to the Fall Final at Stafford Motor Speedway (Conn.) as his guests, just as he did for the Spring Sizzler back in April. He said he hopes to have all of them, as well as the first responders from the Fire and Police Departments, be the grand marshals for the Whelen Modified Tour event. He would like to have a vehicle from the Fire Department, Police Department, and the EMS to lead the parade laps before the race.

“I sat down with the fire chief three weeks ago and thought up a plan, and then I drew up an invitation,” said Pallai. “Anytime something that serious happens, and it’s in our backyard, especially in Modified country, it goes hand-in-hand (to help out).”

Stafford is a special track in Modified country due to it’s impact on the racing community so it makes sense that Pallai picked the facility to be the place where this would take place.

“When I emailed Lisa Arute at Stafford Motor Speedway they were all for it,” said Pallai. “And Stafford is such a marquee place in that community that it just makes a lot of sense. It was a freak incident, but we need to build and try to move on in the most positive way possible.”

Source: Rob Blount/LongIslandJam