Nonprofit · Bridge of Promise Annual Auction · June 6, 2026

The Room Where Joy Lives

A drive up to Woodinville, a charity auction for adults with IDD, a Santa Claus nobody saw coming, and a room full of people who had absolutely no idea they were about to cry

June 6, 2026  ·  Brooks Groves

There are evenings that you go to because someone you love is going, and you figure it will be fine, maybe good, probably worth the drive. You don't go expecting to be changed by it. You don't go expecting to cry. You definitely don't go expecting Santa Claus.

This was one of those evenings.

🚗 Getting There

Went with Aimee, meeting her coworkers in Kent first before carpooling up together. I-5 northbound was closed for construction — more or less a permanent condition at this point — so the drive was longer than it might have been. No matter. We made it.

Woodinville has changed considerably since I was last up this way. The old gravel lot across from the wine village is now the Somm Hotel, which apparently just opened. Very modern, very nice — apartments going in all around it, the whole corridor shaping up as a proper urban village. Woodinville has always been the wine country of western Washington, all the big vineyards clustered here with their tasting rooms, but the place has a different energy now. More of everything. A lot of new growth.

We parked, were greeted at the door with a glass of red wine, registered, and in we went.

🌉 What Bridge of Promise Does

The short version: Bridge of Promise serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) through structured, community-based day programs — Monday through Friday, 9am to 3pm, with locations in Bellevue and Kent. Members build real friendships, take community outings, try new things, and have a regular place to belong. Families get trusted respite and peace of mind.

The longer version is why a room full of strangers ends up crying together in Woodinville on a Saturday night.

They started in 2014 with seven members served. That number is now 270+, drawing from 24 cities across the region. 89¢ of every dollar goes directly to programs.

🍷 The Evening

Well-sized event space, good layout, the usual flow problems you get at these things. The silent auction was spread around the room — member-made artwork, wine games, various experiences. Aimee tried a ring toss on a wine bottle and a separate challenge where you had to pick the one real diamond from a spread. She was genuinely close on both. Cubic zirconium. Hors d'oeuvres and wine circulated during the cocktail hour.

Aimee's work had bought a full table — about twelve of us total. Dinner was a salad followed by wild mushroom ravioli with truffle cream and crispy leeks, paired with a Bordeaux worth paying attention to. Woodinville wine country; they don't phone it in on the wine. I was bidder #396. I managed not to buy a country.

🎙️ The Program

Dan Lewis held MC duties — a KOMO TV institution for what feels like most of my adult life, the kind of anchor who becomes part of the civic furniture of a city. Retired now, but still very much that guy. I kept thinking of the news anchor in The Simpsons and I'm not entirely sure the comparison is wrong, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

Alongside him was Matt Lorch — Emmy-winning anchor, former FOX 13 Seattle / Q13, now a professional emcee and charity auctioneer who travels the region helping nonprofits raise money through storytelling. His connection to the cause isn't professional distance: he has a child with significant disabilities and advocates actively for Special Olympics Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital. You could hear it in how he worked the room. This wasn't a gig. This was personal.

🎤 The Stories

Then the stories came. Members, families, caregivers — real ones, told plainly, without performance or sentiment applied from the outside. The kind that earn their tears honestly because they simply describe what is true.

I didn't expect to shed any. I wasn't alone in that miscalculation. The room got very quiet in the right moments and very loud in others, and by the time the live auction opened, everyone in that space was fully, completely in.

🔨 The Auction

Checkbooks came out. Paddles went up. People were dropping serious money — the way you do when you've just been reminded exactly what it's for. Some tables were clearing $50,000. Even dessert became a fundraiser — the Dessert Dash had people bidding on pies and cakes with the same energy as the big-ticket lots. Notable items on offer included six nights in Cortona, Italy for two and a three-night luxury stay at Brasada Ranch near Bend sleeping fourteen. Aimee spent a few dollars. All for a great cause.

One lot in particular landed differently. Lot No. 11 was a private five-course dinner for twelve in the Bin 47 Private Dining Room at The SOMM, paired with Washington wines, donated by two-time James Beard Award nominee Chef Maximillian Petty — the same chef who had just cooked our dinner. Value: $5,000. But the detail that made the room feel it: Chef Petty has a family member with IDD. He didn't just donate a dinner. He cooked for this community because it's his community too. The meal we'd just eaten carried that weight, looking back on it.

🎅 The Santa Moment

Lot No. 8 was listed in the auction catalog as "A Visit from the North Pole: Santa Comes to Your Party" — a private one-hour appearance from an exceptionally authentic Santa Claus, donated by Aaron Glad. The stated value: Priceless holiday magic.

And then, to demonstrate exactly what priceless holiday magic looks like in practice, Santa walked out onstage.

The members lost their minds.

Pure, unfiltered, Christmas-morning joy — the kind that doesn't calculate or perform or hold anything back. They rushed the stage for pictures, one after another, completely uninhibited, absolutely certain about how they felt and seeing no reason whatsoever not to show it. This was off-script. Nobody had planned for the members to go up there. It just happened, the way real things do. If you were watching from the tables, there was nothing to do but feel it hit you square in the chest.

The members didn't need to win the auction. They got the moment for free. That's the thing about this community — the joy isn't transactional. It just arrives.

The innocence in that room, in that moment, was absolute. I'm not going to pretend I held it together. I didn't. Nobody did.

It's the kind of thing that's impossible to explain to someone who wasn't there, and completely unnecessary to explain to anyone who was. In a world that has otherwise gone fairly mad — a room full of people experiencing Christmas-morning joy in June, because a man in a red suit walked out on a stage and every one of those members knew exactly what that meant and felt every single bit of it.

✨ Simply the Best

Hard to fully put into words, but you feel it immediately in a room like that — these are among the happiest, most genuinely present humans you are likely to encounter anywhere. No pretense, no performance, just pure joy at being included and seen and celebrated.

"If you ever want to know what it feels like to be Taylor Swift, come volunteer and spend time with our members."

— Jodi Richey, Executive Director, Bridge of Promise

She means it literally. These members will be so completely, so wholeheartedly into you — the moment you walk in, the moment they see you, the moment you give them any of your time — that you will feel like the most important person who has ever existed. No irony, no reservation, no holding back. Pure, stadium-sized enthusiasm directed entirely at you. That is what it feels like to be Taylor Swift. And for one evening in Woodinville, standing in that room, surrounded by that kind of joy — we all got a little bit of it.

🌙 The Long Way Home

Aimee's coworker drove us all back to Kent after a long program. Then the drive back down to Lakewood. A long evening by any measure.

Worth every mile.

Somm Hotel · Woodinville, WA · Saturday, June 6, 2026 · 🌉❤️✨

Brooks Groves · June 6, 2026