Help support a great community cause...

I’m sending this message out to friends, colleagues and acquaintances on behalf of my niece, Tanya Rae. Just to be clear, this is not at her request - she’s much too modest. But it just seems like the right thing to do on her behalf, and in light of her generous spirit and the financial commitment she’s assumed to support a community effort that’s become very important to her and to the public servants that she serves.

Tanya started baking cakes for the Lynnwood Fire Department in September 2011. She started out slowly with only 2 stations and 65 cakes a year. Her commitment was to bake birthday cakes for each of the fire fighters and administration for just one year. At the end of the year, her generosity was so appreciated that she decided to continue the program. Well, almost 13 years later, she now serves all 16 locations of South County Fire and Paine Field Fire Department. This amounts to over 400 cakes a year.

Over the years, she’s become known as “Tanya Rae the Cake Lady” and is highly loved and revered among the fire personnel of South Snohomish County. Tanya has a full-time job as a hair stylist. Almost every evening and weekend is spent baking, often multiple cakes, for the birthday celebrants. Needless to say, this is a huge commitment, but Tanya sees this as her personal ministry to a group of professionals and public servants that she respects and appreciates. What better way to show it!

Other than an occasional “passing of the hat”, Tanya bears the entire cost of her ministry on her own. She says she spends hundreds of dollars on her weekly trip to Costco.

So, I am reaching out to all of you, in whatever way this message has reached you, to see if you’d like to support Tanya as you see fit. Again, she’s not asking for it, but it seems like a nice way to participate in a noble cause - and, you don’t have to bake all the cakes!

You can support Tanya by clicking on the following link. Also, you can follow Tanya on Instagram @ scfcakelady. You’ll find testimonials from fire service personnel as well a link where she was featured on KOMO 4 “Eric’s Hometown Heros”. We are using GoFundMe as a funding platform. Please note, since Tanya is doing this as a personal benefit for the fire personnel and does not care to maintain the administrative burden of a not-for-profit, your contribution will not qualify as a tax deduction.