Collection starts with a bike, but goes to better cause

Even today, for Gordon and some family members and friends, tearing off the pop-top tab after opening an aluminum can has become a habit for a good cause.

After years of collecting hundreds of thousands of tabs, Gordon is finally giving away her collection.

On Wednesday, three garbage cans totaling 182 pounds of tabs were loaded into the truck of Tom Haugland, secretary/treasurer for the Border Shrine Club, to be counted and divided. Half would go to the Shriners Hospital for Children in the Twin Cities and the other half would go to an area Ronald McDonald House.

The Shriners Hospital uses the money to fund orthopedic disabilities and the RMDH helps children with cancer or other serious medical conditions and their families.

The Gordon’s tab-collecting obsession started when Sydney was in kindergarten. Her old brother, Ben, who was in third grade, had won a bike through a contest at school and Sydney wanted to win one as well. Sydney’s contest awarded a bike to whoever collected the most aluminum can tabs. At that time, third grade was four years away for Sydney, but she thought she’d get a jump-start on her collection.

Little did she know what she was getting into.

“I can’t even remember starting this whole thing,” Sydney said. “I was really young.”

Neighbor Bill Glad vividly remembers the day he was recruited for the effort.

“Sydney came across the street and told me she was collecting these pop tabs and I said ‘What do you want them for,’” Glad recalls. “She told me she wanted to win a bike and I thought, ‘If she wants a bike that bad, let’s just go buy her one.’”

Nonetheless, Glad dove into what he referred to as “a tab collecting addiction.”

Glad spread the word to a friend elsewhere in the state, who also involved employees and friends.

“Virgil (Aarness) would literally send shipments of these tabs,” said Syndey’s mom Kelly about Glad’s friend. “We just started with little baggies here and there of a collection, once Bill and Virgil were in on it, the collection just grew and grew.”

Aarness could only laugh about the stories of how his collection became contagious.

“I think I had half of the world collecting these tabs for me,” he joked. “I have a 90-year-old aunt who belongs to a private golf club in St. Paul and she would go in their garbage area and pull the tabs off, put them in boxes, wrap the boxes and then send them to me as Christmas gifts.”

He also shared that while he and his wife were on vacation to Acapulco, Mexico, he asked other guests who were sitting around the pool area for their pop tabs.

“When I told them what I was doing with them, they all started saving pop tabs,” he laughed. When the couple left Mexico, they purchased an extra bag to carry the pop tops. “One guy even got my address and shipped me several he’d been collecting prior to meeting me. Sydney’s collection really came from all over,” he said.

The Gordons grew to be good friends with Aarness. “We were hooked bad,” Kelly said. “We had everyone we knew collecting for Syd.”

“People would come ask me how many she had and tell me that they had a lot, too,” Glad said. “I’d tell them, ‘It doesn’t matter how many you have, Sydney’s going to win.’”

But much to the dismay of Sydney and everyone involved, the contest was canceled and she was left with no bike and thousands of tabs.

“I was mad that I didn’t get that bike,” Sydney said.

“We were already so used to collecting tabs that we still did for a while,” Kelly said. “But we decided to give them to someone who needed them and that’s why we chose these organizations.”

However, Glad and Aarness are still going strong.

“I still collect them to this day,” Glad said. “It’s a habit — like being a smoker — you just do it.”

“I am still collecting them, too,” Aarness said. “My family and friends still save them and even though I don’t send them to Sydney anymore, I donate them to the RMDH. It really is an addiction.”

The decision to finally give the 265,720 tabs away two weeks before Sidney’s 18th birthday was mostly because of her father.

“My dad was sick of hauling the heavy cans around,” she said. “It’s time for them to go.”

Although the tabs didn’t get her a bike, Kelly did say she bought Sydney one after the contest was canceled. “Now she wants a car,” Sydney’s grandma, Taffy Walls said. “I think we’d need a few more tabs than this to get her that.”

“It started out as a bike, but this is better,” Kelly said of donating to the causes.

Glad agreed. “If everyone would do this, a big difference could be made. Each tab is helping kids.”

“It is wonderful to see a young person do this,” Haugland said. “As a group, the Shriners collect them, but we really do need more people to.”

The tabs are pure high-quality aluminum which make them more valuable than whole cans, which consist of aluminum and other alloys. Tabs are also easier to store than whole cans.

“My hat goes off to the Gordons and Sydney for doing this,” Aarness concluded. “She may not have got her bike all those years ago, but I hope she gets something out of this good thing that she is doing now.”

It was a bittersweet farewell as Haugland drove away from the Gordon household with the collection Wednesday night.

“It’s weird seeing them go, we’ve had them almost as long as we’ve had Syd,” said Kelly.