Corey LaJoie will have at least a $100,000 worth of names on his car Sunday during the Cup race at Watkins Glen International (3 p.m. ET on NBCSN).
That’s how much money Go Fas Racing’s LaJoie has raised as of Saturday afternoon for the Samaritan’s Feet shoe charity. That total comes three days after LaJoie announced he was foregoing a month’s salary in order to have the charity on his No. 32 Ford this weekend.
Samaritan’s Feet is an organization founded in 2003 to provide shoes to children and individuals in need.
The money has been raised through LaJoie’s Hope Givers page, with the names of each donor regardless of the amount being written on LaJoie’s car.
“When you sign up to be a Hope Giver you commit to try to raise 20 grand from August till November,” LaJoie said Saturday at Watkins Glen. "(Wife) Kelly and I figured let’s just jump on that boat and try to do that. So we signed up for that and we were trying to figure out some very small ideas, just scraping the surface on how we could just raise enough whether it be designing a pair of shoes we could auction off or doing a helmet”
It was late Monday night when he came up with the idea to forego his salary for a month to place the charity on his car. After an 11:30 p.m. call with team owner Archie St. Hilaire, the plan was put into motion.
LaJoie thought he would raise between $15-20,000.
Instead, more than 1,400 donors have contributed an average of $71.51 to reach $102,197.39 as of 3:30 p.m. ET Saturday.
LaJoie said “Every name on the car is going to shoes on the feet of three kids.”
Update: @CoreyLaJoie has broken $100,000 in his donations to @Samaritans_Feet!
— Go Fas Racing (@GoFasRacing32) August 3, 2019
Thank you everyone for you donations and let’s keep it going! https://t.co/PQLawOX968
100 thousand dollars people. Thank you so much. I’m still writing names on the car until tomorrow morning. https://t.co/Mn6IT3KbLY
— Corey LaJoie (@CoreyLaJoie) August 3, 2019