Calgary police chief gets dunked to help underpriviledged children enjoy the day of their lifetimes

Calgary police chief Mark Neufeld took one for the team Saturday at a fundraising event that gives underprivileged children a day at a California theme park.

Neufeld stared down a 4-year-old from his seat in the dunk tank at one point, and when the child’s throw hit the target, Neufeld took the plunge – and accidentally kicked the wall out of the dunk tank, spilling a bunch of water onto the pavement.

“It was his fourth birthday,” Neufeld said, laughing it off. “And he was quite close to the mechanism and I wanted to give him a good dunk if he got it – so (when he did), I wanted to go all the way down (into the bottom of the tank), but I think my knee might have gone through the dunk tank!”

The event, which also featured Calgary fire chief Steve Dongworth and representatives from EMS, raised money for Dreams Take Flight, a charity that is taking 100 underprivileged Calgary kids on a one-day trip to Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

“Dreams Take Flight has been taking disadvantaged kids to a theme park in California for 30 years,” said the organization's president Jan Caveny. “We’ve taken over five thousand kids and we like them to have a day away from their troubles to see what life can be.”

“They leave Calgary at six in the morning, (and) fly to LA on an Air Canada aircraft that’s donated,” Caveny said. “They spend the whole day at Universal Studios packing in as much fun as we possibly can and then they fly home that night and without a doubt, all of them say, “Best day ever.”

'Amazing experience'

Victoria Downey grew up in Toronto with a younger sister and a single mother who was a drug addict and when she was eight, she had the opportunity to go on a Dreams Take Flight trip.

“It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, up to this date,” Downey said.

“It taught me so much about more than just what an experience was at an amusement park, but more of what it was like to find being humble from the volunteers that came with us, what it was like to see beauty and have faith, and all of those things that come with just (experiencing) things you don’t normally see in your everyday life being an underprivileged child.”

The organization is a 100 per cent volunteer charity, with volunteers handling fundraising, flight planning, administration and governance. Air Canada donates the aircraft, while the ground crew, flight crew and other services required for the trip are also donated.

For more information about Dreams Take Flight Calgary, go here.

With files from CTV's Tyler Barrow