‘Eggstravaganza’ event to benefit Sunshine Therapeutic Riding Center for children

A “COVID safe” drive-thru Easter egg hunt will be held Saturday at the Lake Hamilton Elementary School parking lot, with the money raised going toward the Sunshine Therapeutic Riding Center.

The Sunshine Drive-Thru Eggstravaganza will be held from 9 a.m. to noon. The cost is $20 per vehicle. Tickets to the STRC Eggstravaganza can be purchased in advance at the Sunshine Therapeutic Riding Center’s Facebook page.

Eggstravaganza will be the first event held by STRC, an organization formed in 2019 by Katja Summerlin, who told The Sentinel-Record they had not planned to wait until 2021 to hold their first fundraiser.

“In March (2020) we had all these fundraising plans and COVID hit,” Summerlin said.

“A year later, we decided to do an Easter event,” she said, since there weren’t a lot of options for Easter events this year.

“We took a risk and said we are going to do a drive-thru Easter,” she said.

The STRC has a location where they will soon start working with kids with disabilities, but Summerlin said they decided to hold the event at the school instead of their location because they are “hoping to get 200 cars,” which would be rough on their pasture.

Summerlin said they have “about 20 sponsors,” who helped them get food, drinks and plastic eggs for the event.

STRC will use hippotherapy to help disabled kids, she said, noting hippo is the “Greek word for horse,” explaining the “movement of horses has great benefits for the human body.”

She described hippotherapy as “physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy, on horseback.”

A pilot program will launch on April 8 and they have “eight kids committed to the pilot program,” she said. After they see how the pilot program goes, “in June, we’re going to launch the program.”

“We have five horses,” Summerlin said, and are looking to add a sixth. Two of them, a pony and a mare, are expected to be in attendance at the Easter event.

The pony, named Scrim, was purchased the same day as the funeral of Hot Springs police Cpl. Brent William Scrimshire, who was killed in the line of duty on March 10, 2020. She said they asked Scrimshire’s family if they could name one of their horses after him, and the family approved of the tribute.

Summerlin said Scrim is “our little mascot.”

Summerlin said she started STRC because of her child. “My story is a very personal one,” she said. “I’m a mother of a child with special needs,” noting her child was born with Down

syndrome and a heart defect.

“We looked for more therapy and I realized that Hot Springs didn’t have any equine (therapy),” she said. “So I took it upon myself to find people” and bring hippotherapy to the area.

Summerlin said she was “very surprised” by the local reception to her idea to bring hippotherapy to Hot Springs.

Noting she is originally from Switzerland, she said she started talking to people around town, who would then refer her to other people. “I was surprised how quick I had a board of directors,” she said, noting the board has 12 people on it.

The pilot program will last eight weeks, which will “give us time to see how the horses are doing, checking in daily, making sure everyone is safe,” she said.