STEVENSVILLE – Hometown pride was on display in Stevensville on Saturday as residents lined the outside of Super One Foods.
People showed up to support of one of their own — Trooper Wade Palmer. He continues to recover in a Utah hospital, after being shot near Evaro last month.
The benefit filled the parking lot with people wearing green — and supporting the blue.
Stevensville Family Medicine helped organize a community fundraiser on Saturday for a Montana Highway Patrol trooper that was shot in March.
Trooper Wade Palmer remains in stable condition in a Salt Lake City hospital, after receiving multiple gunshot wounds while on duty.
He lived in Stevensville, with his wife, at the time of the incident.
Trooper Jacob Parks worked with Palmer in Missoula and visited him in the hospital a couple of weeks after the shooting.
“I got to spend some time down there with him and it really, seeing him fight and making little improvements really helps and I was glad to come back and continue the work that he did and did well.”
Stevensville Medical Center Nurse Jill Schurman has known the Palmers for about four years. She said the incident was devastating.
“It hits hard, it pulls at your heartstrings, knowing the family personally it just and the situation, and not knowing if he was going to make it or not. What that does to your family-it makes you reflect and look at your own family.”
Sherman also added that if something happened to her family, the Palmers would do the same thing for them.
The medical center organized a silent auction and helped prepare food. Super 1 donated some of that food, along with the tents and space for the event.
T-shirts with the Bitterroot Mountains and badge number 301 were designed for the fundraiser, and Sherman said they’re making more.
“Things like this shake us, but then we see the support, that the community comes, and it really reminds us why we do what we do,” Parks said.
Organizers say $36,200 was raised, including sales from the t-shirts. Click here to view a list of fundraising websites approved by the MHP.
