K’s Korners’ card game raises money for PADS homeless shelters in Dixon

Enjoying a night out is fun.

Winning money is fun.

Helping people is fun.

Enjoying a night out, winning money and helping people all at the same time? Put ‘em all together, and what do you have? A heartfelt gesture of goodwill that’s put thousands of dollars in the hands of people who are helping the local homeless population.

Good times, a good cause and a potentially giant jackpot – now that’s a win-win-win situation, and the couple behind that winning combination has been giving people a chance to get to know a member of the royal family a little better for the past several years, courtesy of a raffle at their rural Sterling business.

K’s Korners customers look forward to coming face to face with a face card that can be worth thousands of dollars when they stop by the bar and banquet facility to get in on a chance to win the jackpot in the weekly Queen of Hearts drawing.

The beneficiaries of that goodwill – the pair of PADS homeless shelters in Dixon – have come to look forward to the support they’ve received through the years.

Marion Younger, who owns K’s Korners with her husband Andrew, organizes the Queen of Hearts raffle drawings, held at 6 p.m. every Tuesday night at the bar and banquet center on Route 30 and Old Route 2, about halfway between Sterling and Rock Falls.

Queen of Hearts raffles have grown in popularity in recent years, both locally and elsewhere, with a number of them held at bars and fraternal organizations throughout the Sauk Valley, with money going to help local causes.

Younger, who is PADS’ treasurer, established one at K’s Korners six years ago to help connect the local homeless population with the resources they need to support themselves.

“It’s fun to see everybody have a good time,” Younger said. “It’s really fun to give people money, and it really feels good to help PADS and support a worthy cause.”

Rules for the Queen of Hearts drawing can vary depending on who’s conducting it, but there’s a general concept to it.

At K’s Korners, tickets – six for $5 – are sold leading up to each week’s drawing, up until a few minutes before the draw. Ticket holders write a number from one to 54 on their tickets – representing cards in a deck, including the jokers – along with their name and phone number.

Tickets are placed in a drum behind the bar, where there’s also a locked display case with 54 sealed envelopes inside, numbered one through 54, each holding a card from the deck inside. A ticket is drawn, the envelope corresponding to the number on the ticket is unsealed, and if it reveals a queen of hearts, the ticket holder wins a portion of the jackpot; if it reveals another card, the jackpot rolls over to the following week.

As the game progresses and envelopes are unsealed, if they don’t reveal the queen, then those numbers are out of play, and players pick from the remaining numbers.

The drawings usually go on for weeks before the queen comes out of hiding. With each jackpot total, 70% goes to the winner and 30% goes to PADS. More than $85,000 has gone to PADS since the first drawing.

Younger hit upon the idea after seeing how popular the raffle became when the Dixon Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 540 started its Queen of Hearts drawing in 2015 to raise money for building repairs. That drawing lasted 44 weeks and racked up $301,510 before the queen of hearts was revealed.

The money was split, with 70% going to the winner, 15% going toward the building fund and the other 15% donated to charities – PADS being one of them.

Younger said she also knew that having a weekly drawing would bring more traffic to the tavern, so after getting all her decks in a row – reviewing state rules and regulations for the drawings – the first drawing took place Aug. 29, 2017, and each Tuesday night since then has been a busy one at the bar.

“I thought if we could do that for Dixon PADS, and raise that kind of money to help it, it would be wonderful,” Younger said. “I checked into it and found out if you’re not a nonprofit – if you’re a bar, for example – you can do a Queen of Hearts, but you have to do it for a charity. Of course, the charity I work for is Dixon PADS, so that’s how it evolved.”

Even if a winning ticket doesn’t reveal the queen, the owner of the ticket wins a prize if they are present at the drawing. That amount is based on the jackpot total; for example, if the pot is worth $40,000, the week’s winning ticket holder would win $500.

Sandy Gonzalez of Rock Falls was one of the lucky ones who had their ticket drawn. Her ticket was pulled during the Sept. 5 drawing, but the number she had on her ticket didn’t reveal the queen. She was present for the drawing, however, and left the bar that night $500 richer.

Gonzalez said she enjoys coming to K’s Korners with her friends to enjoy a night out and get in on the thrill of seeing whether they’ll be a winner that night.

“I come because it’s very exciting,” Gonzalez said. “You get to sit with your friends, and then when they call your name – oh, my God. I had never won here, and it was very exciting. It’s $500 I didn’t have, so that worked out.”

Although some places’ drawings will start over with a full board of cards when a joker is revealed, K’s Korners’ drawings run no more than 54 weeks. Sometimes the queen comes out of hiding by the halfway point, and other times she plays hard to get.

The bar’s sixth round was especially interesting. The queen of hearts held out until she was the last one on the board, and the jackpot swelled to six figures, with the winner pocketing $94,230, minus Uncle Sam’s cut, of course.

A W-2G form is filed by the winner before receiving the money, similar to how casino and lottery payouts are arranged.

Although the suspense was good for ticket sales and good for business, it left the PADS shelters waiting more than a year for a winner, so Younger decided to come up with a way to keep money coming in to PADS.

She added a weekly 50-50 raffle to the Tuesday night fun, with half the raffle winnings going to the winner and the other half to PADS. The 50-50 raffle proved to be a big hit, too, with the pot doubling from the first draw in a matter of weeks.

“We went 54 weeks waiting for a [queen of hearts] jackpot,” Younger said. “Now, with the 50-50, we can donate money every single week.

“With our houses, you have to pay for gas, electric, water, garbage and everything, and with two houses, that begins to deplete the funds pretty rapidly. So we started the 50-50 to help with that.”

Having spent decades in the hospitality business, coming up with ways to keep people coming through the doors comes naturally for Younger.

She and her first husband, Richard Wilson, owned Wilson’s Tap on West First Street in downtown Dixon for 35 years. After Wilson died, Marion Younger sold the bar to her daughter Val, who changed the name to Val’s Place.

Marion remarried and took charge of K’s Korners, opened by Andrew’s late father, Marvin, in 1972.

In 2015, the Youngers bought a former barn about a mile west that once housed the Double G Western Store and had it moved to their property. The barn was attached as an annex to the tavern on the lower level and as event rental space on the top floor.

While K’s Korners’ expansion plans came together, PADS’ plans still were a work in progress – that was, until it received a game-changing gift in May 2017: a two-story home on the northwest corner of West Everett Street and Hennepin Avenue in Dixon.

The donation was much needed at the time. In 2016, its lone home on West First Street faced a shortage of space, housing as many as 106 people over the course of the year, and the arrangement of men, women and children under a single roof “didn’t work real well,” Younger said.

Men were housed upstairs, and women and children were on the ground floor.

Although the second home, built in the late 1800s, didn’t come with strings attached, it did come with a list of home improvement projects that needed to be completed before it could be used to house women and children.

That’s where her majesty stepped in. The Queen of Hearts drawings have gone a long way in helping to pay for repairs and renovations.

“It needed a lot of work,” Younger said. “All of the heating and cooling had to be replaced, all of the plumbing had to be replaced, and there was a lead paint problem, and all of that had to be redone. There was a huge expense, and it just worked out well when our jackpot got really big. Then we were able to donate a lot of money toward that.”

Along with providing residents with basic necessities such as food, clothing and personal care products, PADS also has programs to help in job searches, interview skills and other life skills.

Donations of time, money and goods always are needed, but the “PADS Homeless Shelter, Dixon IL” Facebook page also posts requests for specific donation needs.

As for the home of the Queen of Hearts drawing, the customers who come to her “Korner kastle” enjoy being able to help a good cause. Part of the raffle’s popularity comes from the satisfaction of knowing where a portion of the money will go.

“It’s a great thing,” Gonzalez said. “A lot of people will ask, ‘Where does the other part go?’ When they tell you, that’s what makes it even better.”

While tickets fill the drum and people fill the bar, anticipation fills the air at K’s Korners on Tuesday nights. The countdown until the drawing is shouted for all to hear, right up to the final minute before the last ticket is sold and the tickets are tumbled.

Who will win? Will the queen be seen? Who will have half a chance at a 50-50 raffle? The drawings – both the Queen of Hearts and the 50-50 – give people something to look forward to.

“Everybody has fun,” Younger said. “Everybody has a really good time.”

To learn more

• K’s Korners, 13030 Galt Road west of Sterling, is open from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily; Queen of Hearts drawings are at 6 p.m. every Tuesday, and 50-50 raffle drawings follow at 7 p.m. Find it on Facebook, email mlyounger51@hotmail.com or call 815-626-2988 for information.
• PADS Homeless Shelter in Dixon has a men’s home at 805 W. First St., and a home for women and children at 203 W. Everett St. Find it on Facebook, email dixonpads@comcast.net or call 815-288-6818 for information.