Today is one to be thankful as it is Thanksgiving.

Mike Eames, the general manager of Rocky Mountain Raceways in West Valley City, Utah, near Salt Lake, is thankful he found a program to help members of his community in need.

The program – Speed for Socks Campaign – was something Eames literally thought up just over a year ago on the spur of the moment.

“I was getting ready to get on a plane here in Salt Lake and fly to Pomona (Calif., for the NHRA Finals),” Eames said. “As I was sitting in the airport the Today Show was doing a story about how it was starting to get cold and people always donate gloves, hats and scarves and coats to shelters around the country and they were saying how sometimes socks are overlooked items. I was sitting in the plane and thought how can we (Rocky Mountain Raceways) get socks? I thought people can bring us socks and we can give those people tickets. I said this needed a name and I came up with Speed for Socks.”

The name and the program was a hit with Eames’ fellow workers.

“I sent an email out to my entire staff before my plane took off,” Eames said. “When I landed in California I had a response from literally everybody on my staff that they absolutely wanted to do it.”

The goal of the inaugural Speed for Socks in 2015 was modest.

“We wanted to get 1,000 pair of socks,” Eames said. “We thought that would be awesome if we could get 1,000 pair of socks. Well, we ended up generating just over 8,000 pairs of socks. We distributed those socks to three local Salt Lake shelters. We are going to do it again this year and our goal is to raise 10,000 pair of socks.”

Delivering socks from the first Speed for Socks initiative was especially gratifying for Eames.

“We thought if we delivered 1,000 pair that would be awesome,” Eames said. “Then, the socks just kept rolling in and rolling in, every day the UPS guy was showing up. Here’s some from Southern Utah, here’s some from Colorado, here’s some from California and Nevada. Getting that support from the racing community was tremendous. We took those socks to the shelters, one which serves a lot of little kids and they were so happy because they were literally almost out of socks and we gave them 3,000 pairs. One of the biggest shelters in Salt Lake City, The Road Home, is where we delivered the most socks. They were so overwhelmed because they had people come in the night before who needed socks, and we gave them about 4,000 pairs. It was so great to see their reaction.”

Eames said 2nd annual Speed for Socks campaign is underway and Rocky Mountain Raceways is taking donations until Dec. 14. RMR officials will then deliver the socks to shelters on Dec. 16.

“Just virally by having racers share this on Facebook pages we had racers from California ship us up socks, and racers from Arizona, Nevada and Colorado,” Eames said. “We had a whole bunch of racers ship us socks which was absolutely tremendous.”

For more about the Speed for Socks Campaign visit the following link http://rmrracing.com/speed-for-socks-is-back/.

“It’s really hard to fathom how much this program means to these shelters and something we definitely plan on continuing for years to come,” Eames said.

People interested in donating may send socks to the following address 6555 West 2100 South, West Valley City, UT, 84128.