NEW CORVETTE GOES TO FORMER PLANT CITY RESIDENT.
For the first time in the history of holding the Florida Strawberry Festival New Corvette Giveaway, there was drama added to drawing the ticket and announcing the winner’s name. Before the drawing, the ticket hopper was turned many times. Raffle officials pulled a teenaged girl from the crowd, instructed her to reach deep into the pile, grab a ticket, rub the paper between her fingers to make sure she only had one in hand, then pull it out to reveal the winner. The ticket she pulled………had no name and no telephone number on it. The rules for the raffle are the ticket had to have a name and telephone number. “In 16 years, it’s never happened before,” Steve Hurley, owner of Stingray Chevrolet, said. Since this ticket didn’t qualify, those officiating made a decision to draw another ticket. The young lady reached deep into the hopper once again, and drew the name………Shawn Fox.
The winner was not present for the drawing, so the emcee called the telephone number on the winning ticket, and got………voicemail. He left a message that said, “Hi Shawn. My name is Mike Calta from 102.5 The Bone, and I am here with my friend Steve Hurley. We are at the Strawberry Festival and we are calling to tell you that you won a brand new Corvette. Give it up for Shawn!” The crowd cheered. “Those are all the people that really hate you because they didn’t win….you are the winner, buddy.”
Steve Hurley texted the winner two times, then called back and got an answer.
“Shawn, congratulations!” Hurley said on the phone. “You won the 2025 Stingray Chevrolet Corvette Raffle. What do you think?” In their discussion, Fox said he has been buying raffle tickets for four or five years, and he recently moved from Plant City to Tampa. Fox bought his tickets on Saturday at the Festival. Fox said his kids were starting to get calls from their friends about the raffle. “I have wanted a Corvette since the new models came out,” Fox said on the phone. “I’ve got someone who is actually there at the Festival calling me right now to tell me that I won.”
“Another Florida winner,” Hurley commented after the call. “That is really, really cool. That tells you just how much the area supports this raffle.”
The MSRP of the Corvette Stingray Convertible 2LT is $90,370. Stingray Chevrolet pays for tax, title, and tag in addition. “I had a vision a long time ago to think about how we could raise a lot of funds for Unity in the Community,” Hurley said. “I had been on the board a couple of years after we started Stingray. I felt like this would be a way to raise a lot of dollars from the community. After this week, we will be at over $3.5 million we have donated to Unity in the Community in the last 16 raffles. We have been blessed to have some pretty good success in the last 16 years with Stingray Chevrolet, and people ask me what I am most proud of. I would say this raffle is what I am most proud of. I am proud of our people and proud of the success we have had at the dealership. I have been in the car business for 40 years. I have been a dealership owner for 16 years. But I never knew how rewarding this would be to give back to the community that supports Stingray Chevrolet.”
Unity in the Community is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Money brought in from fundraisers like the New Corvette Giveaway, and donations, are allocated to 60 local on-the-ground charities and organizations that fulfill the mission of the organization.
“We have been doing this for 16 years, and every year it is an honor, and a pleasure, to serve the community because there is such a need in the community,” Sharon Moody, Unity in the Community Treasurer said. “There is such a need in the community for our civic organizations we fund. They all do good things in this community for our children. It is an honor that Stingray Chevrolet and Steve and Susan Hurley donated this car, and don’t take anything out of it. Everything that is raised is given to Unity in the Community, and that is a blessing. It is a huge difference, because the way things are going now, everybody is in such need. Unity donating all this money is to help our kids with the backpacks, and feeding the homeless.”
It will take another week to tabulate and confirm how much money the raffle raised, sign paperwork, and set up the event when the key fobs are given to Fox.
