 The Portland Rotary Club presented the Portland Police Department with a check to cover the cost of purchasing a new police dog for the Canine Union. Makle will join five other teams that are used in a wide variety of police operations. Police Chief Michael Suschuck talked about the benefits of this generous donation. On behalf of the Portland Police Department, we couldn't be happier. I'll tell you that with business folks and community leaders here in the room, we all know how stretched everyone is from a resource perspective. So if you can picture my face as I'm sitting on my desk and John calls me completely out of the blue, and I know John from his support for Memic for our award ceremony on a yearly basis. But John calls and he's talking about the Canine program and wanting to make a donation on behalf of the Rotary. Then I had the opportunity to meet Cyrus and we had a chance to sit down and talk about the entire process. And we weren't talking about amounts or anything else, we're just talking about a donation that the Rotary was so kind to give. And then to find that it was for a full $6,600 which fully pays for Makle was absolutely incredible. I couldn't have been happier. So I was calling everybody on my end. It was like Christmas for our Canine officers. They were tickled to death. It's an incredible resource. I could tell you countless stories about our Canine handlers running miles through the woods with the Canine's tracking lost children, lost elderly individuals, people with autism, people with other mental health issues and being able to track them and bring them home safe. And that's what we're all about. And so today's pretty special. You can see Makle was pretty special. He's not in the least bit concerned about being up here in front of a crowd here today. That's for sure. So Jack is very tickled to death. He's our latest Canine officer. So to be able to have this partnership and know that it came from the Rotary in your support is incredible. Chief, what is this donation of this kind mean to the department? Well, it's an incredible opportunity for us to further enhance the safety of the general public. We have currently five fully certified Canine teams. They're very expensive. They're very valuable to us and to the community. So the opportunity to have another fully functioning dog out there on the road is incredible for all of us. What kind of work do these dog teams do? It varies. Right now Makle is pretty young in his training. He's focused on the patrol side. It's kind of two functions. Patrol would be general searches, tracking, potential apprehension work. And then after that, they'll move into more of drug detection work, where they're actually sniffing out drugs in different venues. And these are very expensive teams to maintain. Is that right? They're certainly very expensive to initially purchase. Makle cost $6,600, which without the Rotary's assistance, we would have been waiting for quite some time to put together enough money to actually purchase another Canine team. So it's important that organizations like this help the police department participate in the community? Yeah, absolutely. And this is completely unsolicited donation on behalf of the Rotary to us, which is important because there's legislation out there around. You know, we can't go out and actively solicit for funds. So to have organizations like this come to us and donate money is just a great thing. Cyrus Hagee is president of the Portland Rotary Club. How did the Doniesha-Finn who Canine team come about? Well, Portland Rotary has a lot of projects we do around the city, around greater Portland area. And we're always looking for something that we can do that is quick, that's beneficial to the community. And the police dog, which has sort of fell into our lap, is what a great idea. They need a new dog. We know the chief. We have a good relationship with Memic. And we all got together and it just happened very quickly. Is this the first time that you've done this sort of thing? It's the first time we've done a police dog with the police department. We have a long relationship with Long Creek and we do a lot of work with the at-risk kids out there. But this is the first time in my knowledge that we've done a project directly with the police department and it will not be the last. You're the new president for a new year starting today. What are some of the projects that you'll be looking at coming up for this year? Well, we're going to do a lot of youth-oriented projects. Obviously, every year we pick a senior from every high school in greater Portland and we give them a scholarship, a book donation, and then allow them to make a donation to their favorite charity. We do soup kitchens. We'll do a Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless at St. Vincent de Paul. We've got our lead fundraising event, the Outdoor Challenge, which is a partnership between the Portland Rotary and the Boys and Girls Club, which in our first year netted over $27,000 that was split 50-50. That money that came from that event, we will then use to give to other organizations to support other projects. We've got a long relationship with the Salvation Army, YMCA, Ripple Effect has been one of the organizations that we supported. We have a relationship with the public schools, mentoring programs out at TAS, one of the programs we used to do, a program where we built houses. That is a difficult market in today's world, so we're going to rekindle that with a much smaller scope-type project with the kids in the carpentry program. Of course, that's near to my heart since I spent my whole life building things, so I'm looking forward to that. If people want more information about Rotary or a little how to become a member, where can they go? Well, you can go to Google Portland Rotary or go to PortlandRotary.org and get more information about Portland Rotary. Rotary International is a huge organization. It is the largest NGO in the world. There are 34,000 clubs, two and a half million members around the world.