By John McLoone

There’s no doubt that the Edina Real Estate Teams of Edina Realty in Hastings have big hearts.

Their commitment to helping out in Hastings and overall friendliness are evident to anyone who has the honor of meeting them.

The Edina Realtors invited the community to their offices in Hastings where the “heart” of the community was on full display.

As part of Hearts for Hastings, people were invited to offer food or monetary donations for Hastings Family Service or the United Way-Food 4 Kids program. Also, attendees had the opportunity to make Valentine’s Day Cards that will be delivered to local veterans and senior care centers. Donor names were put in raffle baskets, and prizes were awarded to some lucky winners.

In truth, though, the community is certainly the fortunate one, with the commitment shown by the Edina Realty to these great causes.

The company usually did an event around Christmas, but in recent years, the COVID pandemic made that difficult.

“We decided to do a food drive, and thought of doing gift baskets to give people tickets for whatever they bring in. We decided to all pitch in some money and the office pitched in some money, and we got these great gift baskets,” said Christy Lundby Hill. “And then as we were brainstorming, the idea came up because it’s right before Valentine’s Day, to have people do the Valentine’s cards that we could give to the local veterans and the senior housing facilities. They don’t always get cards. We thought that would be fun for kids to do.”

That was the genesis of the Hearts for Hastings event, a concept which could spread to other local Edina offices.

“We’re hoping that it gets bigger each year,” said Lundby Hill. “Maybe we can get people to donate baskets in the future, and then when people get tickets for bringing donations in, they can have more baskets to put the tickets in. It was just kind of a fun idea. For the first time, we worked out a few kinks, but I think it turned out pretty well.”

The team printed up 1,500 tickets for individual item donations on the day.

“It just turned out to be a great idea for us to do for Hastings, because we have a heart for Hastings Family Services and Food4Kids. I don’t think enough people know about that program, and it’s really cool. It helps kids who don’t have so much food on the weekends. They put together packages for the kids to take home. A lot of people brought in food that specifically can go in the bags for that. I think that’s really cool,” said Lundby Hill.

The Valentine card bin was filled with hundreds of submissions.

It shows – again – that the Hastings heartbeat is strong.

The Hearts for Hastings event was held Saturday at Edina Realty in Hastings. Photo by Bruce Magnuson.