Detective Tom Cotone, in full Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office uniform, approached a table of diners last Wednesday evening at the Chili’s in New Iberia. 

“Good evening, how you folks doing?” he asked, with a red paper bag in hand, “Tip A Cop” scrawled across it in black magic marker. 

They were doing well, on their way back to Texas after visiting family for the holidays. 

Cotone then launched into his pitch: he and Detective Lester Hebert were at Chili’s that evening collecting donations for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Would they care to donate?

The national restaurant chain has been raising funds for St. Jude’s since 2002, when seven branches first participated; this year, more than 1,000 locations across the country take part, from late November until the first of the year. 

Efforts at the New Iberia location, on Center Street — a regional fundraising leader that had by Wednesday night already surpassed its $4,000 goal — have been led by Jeanette Jones, that location’s “Hope Captain.”   

Each Chili’s location has a Hope Captain, charged with encouraging and keeping motivated the rest of the staff throughout the fundraising period. 

“It used to be all of September, but its changed. This year it ran from Nov. 20 to Dec. 31. That’s a long time to keep momentum up,” said Jones. 

Hard, but clearly not impossible; as of the day prior, December 25, they had already exceeded their $6,000 — by more than $2,000. 

Donations have been raised in several ways. For any donation amount, restaurant patrons could “Create A Pepper,” coloring in a pre-drawn chili pepper and having it posted with their name on the wall of the restaurant. Commemorative t-shirts were sold at $10 a piece. They sold “Crazy Straws,” wildly twisted and brightly colored, which allowed customers to “give one sip at a time.” Hope Co-Captain Kenny Richard had a St. Jude-inspired painting donated by artist Marcel St. Pierre, which was being raffled off for $5 a ticket. 

It was Jones who reached out to the IPSO. “Tip A Hero” programs at other Chili’s locations had brought in firefighters and first responders, so she decided to contact the Sheriff. 

“It took like a month to get ahold of the right person, to OK it. They’re so busy,” said Jones. “But they’ve come a few times. It has been awesome.”

Several nights this month, officers have come for a meal at about 5 p.m., then from 6 p.m. until 8 or 9 p.m. have gone from table to table asking for donations. On a previous night, Hebert and Sergeant Stephen Guidry had netted $325 in two hours for the cause. 

On Wednesday night, Hebert and Cotone began strong, with a $50 tip. Within a half hour they had moved from the dining lounge to the bar booths, where Liz and Bernie Jeanminette put several more dollars into the officers’ bags. 

“We’ll do this every year that we’re invited to,” Hebert said. “There are a lot more deputies that are interested in doing it.” 

Curing Cancer

Jones, who’s son’s best friend died of Leukemia at age 18, still gets teary-eyed when talking about the mission of the Memphis, Tennessee-based research hospital. 

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is a nonprofit pediatric research and treatment facility, treating children with catastrophic disease without regard for ability to pay. Known largely for their oncology work, researchers there have made strides in many other fatal diseases as well, including AIDS and sickle cell anemia in children.

“People don’t realize what St. Jude’s has done for research,” Jones said.

The hospital was founded in 1962 on the premise that “no child shall die in the dawn of life.” Since then the survival rates for some of the most common types of childhood cancers have gone from below 5 percent to above 90 percent today, largely based on the work done there. 

“When St. Jude’s started, 80 percent of children treated for cancer died. They’ve completely flipped that. Now it’s 20 percent, and 80 percent survive,” said Jones. “If we can cure childhood cancer, we can cure all cancer.” 

In November Jones had helped organize another fundraising event for St. Jude’s, a $10-entrance-fee kickball tournament called “Kicking Cancer out of the Park,” at the PepperPlex. It raised more than $700. 

“We’re doing it again next year,” she said. “We’re pushing it $1 at a time.”

Those dollars are adding up. The New Iberia store, which Jones said makes about $40,000 a week, is far exceeding other regional stores, several of which make well over twice that much. They are so far number one in their region, and are well within the top ten in the nation. 

The competition remains friendly, however. Jones regularly scrolls through a private Facebook group page made exclusively for Hope Captains around the country. They are constantly sharing challenges and successes, cheering one another on when someone surpasses a goal or offering creative new ideas to one another when fundraising stalls.

“A store in McAlester, Oklahoma, has raised $20,000!” Jones said, perplexed. “I don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Good for them, that’s great, I just don’t know how they did it.” 

She said a Chili’s in Palm Springs, California, is regularly favored to win. 

“Next year I’m praying for us to raise $10,000 — who knows what God can do?” Jones said. 

A sheet tallying all the employees at the New Iberia location had Jones in the lead Wednesday night, with $1,926, followed in second by Luccia Schaubert, at $1,343. Out of all Chili’s employees at 1,500 stores across the country, Jones was placing 46th nationally and Schaubert 92nd. They are first and second in their region.   

“We’re very blessed to have Jeanette as a leader. She’s very committed to the company and to the cause,” said General Manager Veronica Boyd. “She is an angel. She’s been out in the community getting it all together. And this is a cause that is very close to the heart of this company.”

Team Payton

The detectives had circled the bar and the dining area several times by 7 p.m. Hebert stood beside the hostess stand, near the front door.

“Once we’ve hit every table, we’ll usually come stand by the door and greet people, and ask as they come in,” he said. 

He told the story of one family that came in the last time he was there greeting people. A family had actually just gotten back into town, from a Louisiana-affiliated St. Jude treatment center. The little boy with them was undergoing treatment for an ocular cancer.

“We had no idea they were coming, and they didn’t know we’d be here. But they came in, all of them wearing St. Jude t-shirts,” Hebert said. “The shirts said ‘Team Payton.’ The boy’s name was Payton. And they told us what was going on. And that’s exactly why we’re here,” he said. “We showed him the patrol car, and turned on the lights and everything.”  

On the wall near the door, right in front of Hebert, were several colored Create-A-Pepper’s that read “Team Payton,” created by Payton himself and several of his siblings. 

Hebert has a 2-year-old of his own, and Cotone has a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old.  

“A children’s charity, I mean, it’s the biggest concern that we have,” Hebert said. “We both have kids, and we think, where would we want to be in that situation?”  

Just then an older lady, having exited a booth in the dining room, pushed a walker past the detectives, stuffing a handful of bills in Cotone’s bag on her way out. 

Hebert and Cotone estimate they’d been making between $200 and $300 each evening they’d been there. 

“Almost everyone donates,” Hebert said. “You tell people it’s for St. Jude’s — I mean, it’s the best cause there is.” 

When the detectives left the Center Street Chili’s on Wednesday night, New Iberians had put close to $400 in their bags.