Sonny Gallardo was a sixth grader when he started knocking on doors in Prairie Village, Kansas, offering to rake leaves with his grandfather. By this fall, those jobs had grown into Sunnyside Jobs LLC, a lawn business with a five-person crew. Then, in a single night, the trailer that carried his mowers was gone.
Thieves took a trailer, five mowers, two weed eaters and two blowers, about $20,000 in equipment, KCTV5 reported. Within two weeks, a GoFundMe for the teen had raised more than that, and by Nov. 14 the total stood at $35,925.
From Leaf Piles to a Five-Person Crew
The business started small. Sonny’s grandfather supplied the gear for those first leaf-raking jobs, and the work grew into mowing lawns. Over about four years, the business moved up to larger trailers twice and built up enough equipment to keep a five-person crew working, according to the “Help Sonny Rebuild Sunnyside Jobs” fundraiser page. This year, he formed Sunnyside Jobs as an LLC.
He told KCTV5 he simply likes the work, and that it brings joy to the people he mows for and to him as well.
The Night Before Halloween
The theft happened the night before Halloween. According to the fundraiser page, someone came in the middle of the night, unhitched the 10-foot trailer that held all five mowers and cleared out the back of the work vehicle…