Yellowknife’s giveaway queen gives back to help a friend

The first person in line at Yellowknife’s new KFC? She won that. The $10,000 getaway? She won it. Name an online contest in the past 18 months, and Jes Amora probably won.

Amora has won more than 40 contests since the pandemic started. She knows Yellowknifers roll their eyes when she starts tagging friends in Instagram giveaways. Now she’s using that to her advantage, to help a friend.

She and Courtney Jung have already used GoFundMe to raise almost $35,000 for Adam Scarf, who collapsed while on vacation in Edmonton in October and is recovering from surgery.

Scarf remains in the stroke unit of Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital, Amora said on Tuesday. While she is proud of the sum raised to date, she believes Yellowknife can dig deep to help Scarf financially prepare for the long recovery journey ahead.

Her new project is an online auction to help Scarf and family. The auction, being run via Faceboook, ends at 11:59am on Friday. More than 70 items have been donated from as far as Hay River, Tuktoyaktuk, and Fort Simpson.

Anyone in Canada can bid, Amora said. Items will be mailed to their winners if necessary.

To spread the word, Amora – the self-styled “queen of winning giveaways” – is running a giveaway of her own in tandem with the auction.

Every time the auction’s event page is shared on Facebook, you get an entry to Amora’s giveaway. She says she has hand-picked a selection of her favourite Yellowknife things, worth hundreds of dollars, for the winner.

“Yellowknifers love winning giveaways and entering contests,” she told Cabin Radio on Tuesday. “If you can’t donate, that’s totally fine. If you share the event, that’s even more amazing, just to get the word out for everybody to see.

“And yeah… people want to sign up because they know I can’t win.”

Amora says the auction is already set to raise more than $17,000, on top of the sum donated through the GoFundMe page, which remains active.

“From talking to Adam’s mom, Stacey, and talking to the doctor, we know the recovery is up to a year. And we know $34,000 is amazing but I believe, as a community, we can go higher and do more to help them,” she said.

“We don’t know if Adam is going to need certain things for the future and it’s good to plan ahead of that.

“This will help them with accommodation, transportation, food, legal fees, and provide relief for lost wages.”

According to Amora, Scarf is “able to communicate a little bit” with hand gestures and a few words. “He will be in Edmonton for the time being,” she said.

Her next project is to assemble a video from family and friends.

“Christmas is coming and he’s starting to realize what is happening, I think,” she said.

“Right now, so many people are asking what they can do to help and, honestly, it’s sharing information and having prayers for him.”