PORT ST. LUCIE — It’s a 20-year-old dream come true.

Richard “Rick” Hartley and his wife, Ann, picked up the phone last week in their Maryland home and heard Robin Sutherland on the other end telling them they had just won the YMCA Easter House.

The drawing was on Thursday, but the family couldn’t be reached when Sutherland, the YMCA’s house planning consultant, called to let them know of their big win.

“I’m still in shock,” Rick Hartley said. “We were in such disbelief that at first I thought someone was playing a practical joke.”

The Berlin, Md. couple had been buying Easter House tickets from the YMCA of the Treasure Coast, helping to support programs for local children, for almost as long as the 22 years that Easter House drawings have been held.

Rick Hartley, 64, and wife Ann, 65, have a small family-run plumbing business. Their son Bryan, 39, and Rick Hartley go out on the calls, while Ann does the administrative work.

The Hartleys have friends in Stuart and had heard so much about Port St. Lucie that they decided they’d like to have a house there.

Their parents spent a lot of time in Melbourne, and the Hartleys have annual passes to Walt Disney World, which is an easy drive from the Treasure Coast.

While they probably won’t move here until they retire, they plan to spend as much time here as they can take away from their business.

This year’s Easter House will be built on Tabor Road, off Becker Road in southern Port St. Lucie, by Mercedes Homes Inc.

Valued at $203,800, it has three bedrooms, two baths, a two-car garage, and a covered porch. It’s 2,600 square feet.

The proceeds for the Easter House go to support youth programs and expansions. This year’s house raised $639,620 by selling tickets for $10 each.
By Susan Burgess

Tags: bui, children, disney, driving, housing, Mercedes, parents, raise, raises, roads, Stuart, value, wife

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under Community events, Port St. Lucie, St. Lucie County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.