PORT ANGELES — Food bank clients in Port Angeles and Sequim were the winners of this contest.
Sequim Mayor William Armacost took a pie in the face Monday in the culmination of a weeklong friendly competition between the Safeway stores in Sequim and on Lincoln Street in Port Angeles.
Actually, the “pie” was only whipping cream in a pie shell, said Mike LaGrange, manager of the Lincoln Street Safeway store.
Still, it made quite a mess.
“He was a very, very good sport,” LaGrange said of Armacost.
Sequim Mayor William Armacost bends over after he took a whipped cream pie in the face from Ben Clemens, 10, the son of Port Angeles Mayor Kate Dexter, at the Lincoln Street Safeway in Port Angeles. (Dave Logan/for Peninsula Daily News)
Armacost and Deputy Mayor Navarra Carr of Port Angeles agreed to raise more interest in this year’s annual Hunger Bag competition between the two Safeway stores. Both agreed that the representative of the losing store would travel to the winning store to be hit with a pie.
The result was a record-breaking year.
Donors contributed $17,173 to the Lincoln Street Safeway in Port Angeles, LaGrange said, while Sequim’s store on Washington Street collected $13,264 in donations. The money will go to the Port Angeles and Sequim food banks.
“It added about $10,000 to our two stores together,” LaGrange said.
LaGrange said the average each year is generally between $6,000 and $7,000. This year, the Port Angeles store has averaged about $11,000 a week and the Sequim store about $8,000 a week, LaGrange said.
This year, the Port Angeles store spotted Sequim’s about $2,500 because it is larger than its neighbor, LaGrange said.
Toward the end of the week, the Lincoln Street store was behind, its manager reported; customers were calling in to see how much more the store needed to claim the title.
Carr was representing Port Angeles because Mayor Kate Dexter is the sister-in-law to Emily Dexter, the Port Angeles Food Bank director, and so she abstained from participating.
But that didn’t apply to Dexter’s son, Ben Clemens.
The 10-year-old threw the pie that creamed the face of the Sequim mayor after the mayor removed his face mask.
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Executive Editor Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3530 or at lleach@peninsuladailynews.com.
