It wasn’t prime time, but Herricks High School senior Tyler Cohen got four minutes on a CBS New York affiliate show early last Saturday morning to tout his initiative to donate baseball caps to orphanages.
Cohen was interviewed on Donna Drake’s weekly “Live It Up” show at 6:30 a.m. in a Dec. 29 segment that aired on CBS and WLIW, channel 55.
“It was really, really cool. We were the youngest people on the set,” said Cohen, who appeared on the show with his 13-year-old brother, Blake.
Drake, who focuses on stories about philanthropy on her show, had been told about Cohen’s campaign by someone, he said, prompting the invitation for an interview.
He said he told Drake about the origins of his Caps Count! campaign to collect and distribute baseball caps to orphanages abroad and in the U.S.
The experience that led to Caps Count! started when Cohen departed Albertson on a month-long visit to Costa Rica in the summer of 2010 through a trip arranged by 360 Degree Student Travel. A boy he befriended at an orphanage in Costa Rica snatched a new Armour cap he had bought for the trip.
He was initially angry, but then started thinking about how much the cap meant to Fernando, the young friend who took it. His reflection on the experience prompted him to establish Caps Count!, a non-profit venture aimed at providing baseball caps to children in need in South America and elsewhere.
“I wasn’t really nervous but no, I hadn’t been on television before,” Cohen said about the interview experience.
He said he’s hoping the exposure provides some momentum to the cap-collecting venture he organized over the past several months.
“We’re getting a ton of hats. We have 5,000 piled up in my garage right now,” he said, adding that mailing expenses are an impediment at the moment. “The fundraising is an issue. We can’t ship out these hats until I have some funds.”
The 5,000 caps include 1,000 caps donated by a local church and 450 caps from the Redman baseball organization.
Cohen has been devoting less time to Caps Count! while he’s been working on college applications, so he’s pleased with the response.
“It’s been really fascinating to see how many people have been contacting us on their own. I haven’t been advocating as hard as I was in the beginning,” he said.
He shipped 750 caps to five locations in the U.S. in November. He has a contact at the Herricks Community Center who can ship caps to India for free and has made a similar connection to send caps to South Korea.
Cohen is currently maintaining cap collection points at the Herricks Community Center and in Progressive Gymnastics at 2200 Marcus Ave. in New Hyde Park. He also expects to have a collection bin set up soon in the Shelter Rock Library.
Meanwhile anyone interested in the cause can make contributions at Facebook.com/CapsCounts or can make contributions or get more information via e-mail at capscounts@gmail.com
His brother, Blake, will be taking the same kind of community service trip through West Coast Connection next summer that sparked Tyler to start collecting caps for disadvantaged kids who could use them.
