Sun’s ‘Passport’ promotion pays off

The Sonoma Valley Sun’s recently launched “Passport” promotion, wherein Sun readers visited participating merchants to have their news-printed passports stamped for eligibility in a $500 drawing, has a winner.
Susan Herringa-Pieper was presented with five crisp $100 bills on Tuesday.
“I’m really happy we had such an enthusiastic response and that our winner had such a positive experience with every business,” said Sun account executive Cindy Ray.
Herringa-Pieper began her passport only a week before the deadline and still managed to visit all 20 of the merchants in time to qualify for the drawing. The experience provided her with an opportunity to visit old friends and discover new shops as well as to network
“I was thinking about the concept of tithing and giving 10 percent of what one takes in. I thought if I won the $500 I would give $50 to Faith Presbyterian Church,” recalled Herringa-Pieper, who had seen an ad for the church in the Sun. “There’s a spiritual side to money. Something I told someone once is that ‘$50 that is rightly earned and rightly spent and shared can go a lot farther than $500 that has the wrong intention.’”