PORT ANGELES — A receptionist with the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe’s health clinic came away the winner of a new pickup truck on Sunday in the 15th Annual Great Olympic Peninsula Duck Derby.
A rubber duck bought by Gail Dunmire, who has lived in Port Angeles 28 years, came in first out of the 28,058 ducks that floated with the tide down the Nippon Paper Industries USA Co. Ltd. canal to the finish line.
“I was so surprised. It was like a shock,” said Dunmire, contacted Sunday night at home after the race, which she did not attend.
“There’s a lot of ducks that go in. . . . When you think of all the ducks and I was the one, I was so excited!”
Dunmire said she would have been happy just to have won any of the 62 smaller prizes.
$25,000 worth of prizes
The truck from Wilder Toyota of Port Angeles was part of more than $25,000 in prizes donated this year by business owners from Forks to Sequim.
Dunmire bought a six-duck package from sales volunteer Edie Beck, who was playfully razzed by her duck-selling competitors who put up a Burma Shave-style series of signs leading to the event, stating: “Edie’s ducks stink because they sink.”
Tanya Smith and Gail Ralston, who led the two-people sales teams with 2,781 ducks, also honored Beck with a colorfully decorated portable toilet, which they dubbed “Edie’s Office.”
A $2,000 second place prize from 7 Cedars Casino went to KONP-AM radio station owner Brown Maloney, who bought his winning duck from Rand Thomas, owner of Thomas Building Center in Sequim. Maloney also owns The Sequim Gazette once-a-week newspaper.
