Michele Proctor returned to Calvert Hall College High School on Saturday looking for the kickboxing dummy she had spotted earlier that morning among other second-hand goods in the school's gymnasium.
By the time she returned at about 10:30 a.m., it had been snatched up.
The Hamilton woman was one of several hundred bargain hunters who turned out for a yard sale to benefit Calvert Hall and the Kennedy Krieger Institute.
Proctor made off with a handful of vinyl records for $1 each — Lionel Richie, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" soundtrack and Art Van Damme were all in her loot.
"I always like looking for a bargain," she said. "You always find something."
The sale raised more than $3,800, split evenly between the Catholic high school for boys in Towson and the medical institute in Baltimore for children and adolescents, according to Calvert Hall spokeswoman Danielle Werner.
Customers began lining up outside the school at 7 a.m., an hour before the sale opened. The gymnasium was filled with couches, cabinets, trinkets and other goods donated by the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? removal service.
The Baltimore office of the junk removal company proposed the sale. Scott Duerbeck, the general manager of the Baltimore office, said the idea came from an annual yard sale staged by the Toronto office to benefit the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
"Everything that you see here is from us at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?," he said. "So the past six weeks the guys have been bringing stuff back to the office, filling up the trailers from the jobs that we do."
Duerbeck said the company's biggest partners include the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity.
"We always donate and recycle as much as we can anyway," he said. "The main goal is to keep stuff out of the landfill."
Items not sold Saturday were to be donated to the Salvation Army, he said.
Michele Mueller, the special events director in the Kennedy Krieger Institute's office of philanthropy, said the funds raised would support school programs.
The Johns Hopkins affiliate helps children and youth with brain disorders. The institute has about 600 students in special education programs at four schools and several other partnership schools.
"We do so many different fundraisers but nothing like this," Mueller said. "It brings out a totally different crowd of people who want to work it and want to support it."
Some Calvert Hall students have needed Kennedy Krieger's services, so the partnership made sense, said Nichole Regulski, an advancement associate at Calvert Hall.
She said one of Calvert Hall's students was hit by a car at the beginning of the school year. After spending six months at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, she said, he's back in school.
"The stuff Kennedy Krieger does is amazing," Regulski said. "He's thriving, you know, so that's amazing."
About 22 students from Calvert Hall volunteered at the event, carrying couches and other large purchases to customers' cars. They were joined by about 10 volunteers from Kennedy Krieger and more from 1-800-GOT-JUNK?.
Mark Stein, who lives a few blocks from Calvert Hall, bought a grandfather clock for $20. He and his wife learned of the sale through a flier left on their doorstep.
It "normally would go right in the trash," he said, "but we're yard sale junkies."
"We've found a lot of great cuckoo clocks and things over the years," he said. "You hit the right one, you do find those little treasures."
Organizers said they thought the morning rain helped the crowd at the sale because other outdoor flea markets and yard sales were canceled.
That much was true for Bonnie and Ted Fratta.
"On Saturdays we go flea-marketing, and this is the only one today," Ted Fratta said.
The Perry Hall couple left with a box of VCRs for Bonnie's sister's grandchildren, and a DVD storage box they will use as they convert their home videos to DVDs.
Organizers said they were pleased with the turnout, and they hope to put on another sale next year.
"You don't get too many chances to support two organizations at the same time," Mueller said, "so that's kind of neat."
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