The new year is off to great start for 14 local families who received new mattresses to start 2018.
A contest to give away the mattresses was the brainchild of Bill Hermesman, owner of Northpoint Home Furnishings in Durango.
“I love giving back,” he said, noting that his father, Ted, and other family members helped him run the business over the years. Hermesman has owned Northpoint for 14 years, although he’s worked at the store for 35.
He was thinking of different ways to help out local families during the holidays.
“What can I do that’s huge?” he asked. Then he got a notice from Serta about a Black Friday special for its dealers, “and it just happened,” he said. “If you take care of people, you’ll get it back,” he added.
He decided to provide 12 mattress sets to local residents. Hermesman said he wanted entries for the contest take place the old-fashioned way. Entries had to be hand-written and brought into the store.
With so much negative online interaction and people always on their phones, he thought it might be good for folks, particularly young people, to sit down and actually put pen to paper.
Originally, he planned to give away 12 mattress sets, but he said he received so many entries, it was hard to narrow them down, so he ended up giving away 14 mattresses. Another 12 runners-up received pillow sets.
Hermesman said he hopes to make the give-away an annual event.
He received some heart-warming letters, including one from a girl with type 1 diabetes who said it was hard for her mother to crawl up to her loft bed to check her insulin levels at night. Several people were sleeping on old mattresses on the floor.
Northpoint employs two Bayfield residents, and Hermesman said he’s always appreciated the number of customers he has from Ignacio and Bayfield.
