Players! We made it through another winter and here comes the spring and summer. I hope your experience with us has been enjoyable so far, I know the players at our hockey program are enjoying the activity and appreciating the presence of Elaine and J. P. (our two stellar goalies) and I know they thank the two co-convenors every day and I thank them for showing their appreciation.

There is a nasty vein of people in the world who have learned to prey on people who are willing to help others when asked. I want to do all I can to stop their predatory activities, so I will use this space to update anyone who will listen to the latest scams circling our organization. If you get an email that says it is from me or any of the Directors or Convenors asking for financial or other assistance and it says to keep it hush hush or secret so we can surprise someone, please stop and think about the request. The most common ask is for you to go out and purchase gift cards and “send them to me” so I can reward a deserving volunteer. One friend of mine followed up as he wanted to help but when asked to send the access to the cards (send the card # or PIN found on the back under a “scratch security seal” or the sales receipt) it must be used to access the money value of the card. For my friend, he brought the cards to me instead of sending them to me, so the scam was thwarted, and my friend used the cards himself. Please, please do not fall for one of these dastardly scams, I know they appear very legitimate but contacting the person who they say they are to verify their authenticity by using a different contact method; phone a number you know or send an email to an address you know or visit the person, they would like to say thank you anyways. Almost every time the scam can be exposed early by “hovering your cursor” over the sender’s email address and you will see an email address that does not match the email address for the person you know. I hope everyone gets wise to these predators and cuts them off, so they get nothing, NOTHING! Thanks for reading all the way through and I hope it heads off even just one scammer, that would make it worth it.

Steve Holmes
President