Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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Animal Control Officer Allyson Halm will help call Bingo next Wednesday at Lapham Community Center. ***

Saying neighboring communities are seeing overnight thefts from cars, the New Canaan Police Department is urging residents to ensure their vehicles are not left unlocked, especially with keys inside them. A list of theft prevention tips can be found at the bottom of this article. ***

A homeowner on Smith Ridge Road is evicting two people from her property, court documents show. There is no mention of failure to pay rent—the homeowner and evictees appear to be related.

Around Town

The Kiwanis Club of New Canaan Grants $16,000 to Local Organizations Serving Youth

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The Kiwanis Club of New Canaan met at the New Canaan YMCA on Friday to give $16,000 to 16 local nonprofit organizations serving youth, thanks largely to funds raised at the Zerbini Family Circus last June. According to Kiwanian David Hoyle, an attorney who sits on the club’s Allocations Subcommittee, just three years ago the club was only able to give away $2,000. “I think it is just a wonderful thing to be able to give this much money away,” Hoyle told the New Canaanite. “You feel like you’re making that much more of a difference. It’s really great and it’s wonderful because of all of the work that the folks and [Kiwanian] Kathy [Holland] and [YMCA Marketing Director] Kristina [Barrett] do for the service.

News

Full Court Peace: NCHS Basketball Coach Unites Kids, Communities through Hoops

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If Mike Evans had an epiphany—if there’s a single moment that gave rise to the nonprofit organization he founded in 2006—it likely arrived moments after he met the Dalai Lama as a semi-pro basketball player in Northern Ireland. Working at a hoops clinic that had brought together very young children from different backgrounds there, Evans shook hands with the Buddhist leader during the latter’s world peace tour in Belfast, and moments later, two girls—one Protestant, the other Catholic—got into a fight. “They whisked the girls away,” Evans recalled on a recent morning. “The reconciliation was not happening at home or in the classroom for these kids. You get the toughest kids, and at 15 years old they’re on the brink of being a productive citizen or joining the IRA [Irish Republican Army] or UDA [Ulster Defence Association].”

Following the incident, Evans—a 2001 Weston High School graduate and all-state basketball player who would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in writing at Hamilton College (where he set several scoring records) and master’s in education from Harvard—reflected on something that had happened to him as a child growing up in Fairfield County.