SELAH, Wash.- The 2020 death of Brian Harris’s daughter, Emily, shook the family to its core. Emily was killed by her husband in her Selah home leaving behind her two kids.
It was only months after that her family began to work to protect victims of domestic violence and protect people who were in similar situations to Emily’s.
In three years, the Harris family is set to hit the goal of $500,000 raised and donated to the YWCA of Yakima.
Brian Harris has fronted many of the fundraising efforts to this point. Starting with golf tournaments, concerts and hats, Harris is moving to a more unconventional fundraiser: sitting in a human-sized dog kennel for at least three days collecting donations from the Selah community.
“If you do something different, it kinda catches people’s mind,” says Harris.
On Sunday September 24, Harris stepped into his cage and will remain in there until Wednesday. He’s sleeping, eating and living out of the kennel, only leaving to use the restroom.
“The first night, I was sleeping out here in a sleeping bag,” said Harris. “I knew it was supposed to rain so I wrapped myself with a tarp. People ask me why I don’t have a top on the kennel and I say, ‘I feel like I’m cheating people because I need to get treated like a dog.'”
While camping outside of his car dealership, Harris is often greeted with community members asking him about the kennel. With posters of Emily and banners reading “#LiveLikeEmily,” he says it’s often a great conversation starter to share Emily’s story.
“The #LiveLikeEmily was started from a friend of Emily’s,” said Harris. “She would be in a room and see you by yourself and she would come to you and say ‘hey I see you’re sitting alone. My name’s Emily, why don’t you come sit with us?'”
He says his partnership with the YWCA came easy. The circumstances of Emily’s death and the YWCA’s mission provided the necessary teamwork to support the cause.
“When community members step up and support efforts like Brian’s they are ensuring emergency domestic violence services are available 24 hours a day when someone needs them,” said YWCA’s Executive Director, Cheri Kilty. “Brian living in a dog kennel for days on end is a representation of what it can feel like to be trapped in an abusive relationship. You can’t break through those fenced walls.”
“They’re scared to death,” says Harris. “They maybe finally escaped their abuser, and they gotta have somewhere to go.”
When he’s first allowed to exit his cage on September 27, Harris says he will have to do a final tally to check the fundraising numbers. If they haven’t hit a culminative $500,000 over the three years, he’s going to lock himself back in the cage until they do so.
That’s the number the Harris family set as a goal in 2020, and one Emily would be proud of.”
Emily wouldn’t want to be in the forefront,” says her father. “She would love to help; she would love to see the result. She would be so proud of what she is doing helping others.”
If the fundraiser hits their mark, Harris plans to take a step back from the fundraisers. He says after three and a half years of asking for donations, both he and the community have grown a little tired of the same old tale.
“Not that I don’t want to raise money anymore, I do,” says Harris. “I want to be an advocate of the YWCA, but I just want to take a little time off and not ask for money for a little while.”
At this point, it looks like Brian Harris and the fundraising efforts will wrap things up when he steps out of the kennel at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning. Around 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, the donation tally was sitting around $490,000, with some still needing to be tallied.
Through in person and online donations, the Harris family says they are grateful for the community their daughter called home.
“We got some big donations today,” said Harris. “It’s unbelievable what people can do.”
