Kurt Caselli Foundation | Doffo Winery Night
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Great things sometimes come from the worst circumstances. In the six years since Kurt Caselli’s untimely passing during the 2013 Baja 1000, his friends and family have rallied together to launch a foundation in his name that has greatly improved the safety of off-road riding for thousands of participants. Through ride days, fundraisers, and contests, the Kurt Caselli Foundation has raised over one million dollars and have re-invested the money through donations to race series, safety organizations, and individual riders. One of their marque functions is the annual get-together at Temecula, California’s Doffo Winery, a venue that is complete with hundreds of vintage motorcycles and barrels of excellent wine, and we stopped by on Saturday night for the sixth running of the event.
We arrived just in time to hear Donnie Emler share a recap of the past year, award well-deserving individuals and groups with grants, and start the night’s auction. One aim of the foundation is to support racers that decided to pursue higher education through scholarships and for 2019, they had the difficult task of finding two candidates among the many applications. For their hard work and dedication, Kourtney Heald and Kobee Knight received scholarship totals of 2500-dollars each to put towards their programs.
One of the more touching moments of the night was the foundation’s presentation of a grant to the Rescue 3 first responders safety group. A fixture of West Coast off-road events, Rescue 3 has taken care of countless riders at events over the years and representative Andrew McDaniel brought a friend onto the stage that explained the importance of the group. After an inspirational climb up the steps and a few tearful moments, McDaniel explained that when he found his friend on the trail, saving his life required instant action and a coordinated effort by the group. Once he was in doctor’s care, he was told that he would never walk again, but his perseverance was shown when he was on the stage Saturday night. “They are why I am here,” he shared. “I will do all I can, along with my wife, to help riders when they go down.” In recognition of their efforts, Rescue 3 will receive three donations 16,600-dollars over the next three years from the foundation, a total of nearly 50,000-dollars.
The rest of the evening was a blur of auctions, raffles, and seemingly bottomless pours of wine, including a blend produced by the Doffo Winery specifically for the Kurt Caselli Foundation. A one of a kind painting was the highlight of the evening’s auction, one that artist Makoto Endo made using chopsticks to move ink and paint into an image of Caselli on a KTM motorcycle. The artwork was purchased by Alexander Smith, son of motorcycle legend Malcolm, and will be displayed at Malcolm Smith Motorsports in Southern California. Although Smith purchased the original painting, smaller re-prints were sold on site and was used as the label for the 2019 release of the Doffo-Caselli Foundation winery collection.
If you were unable to make it to the event, there are plenty of ways that you can support the foundation and even get something to show for it. A complete collection of merchandise ranging from shirts to hats to stickers is available for purchase at kurtcaselli.com, while Doffo has an inventory of Caselli edition wines and glasses that can be shipped around the United States.
Wow, they are really doing some great things!