At the 2017 HRC National Dinner, longtime HRC member and supporter and former board member Alan Uphold was the winner of the HRC Foundation/Lexus raffle.

“It was an incredible rush,” Uphold said. “When my name was called I couldn’t believe it.”

HRC spoke with Uphold about his experience winning the Lexus, what he has enjoyed most since winning the car and why it is important for him to support the HRC Foundation.

What was your initial reaction when you won the Lexus raffle in 2017?
It’s important to know that I was in a foul mood at the beginning of the night because I was sitting next to my sister, HRC LA Governor and Penn State graduate, Bonnie Uphold. Just as we were sitting down to dinner, Penn State’s perennial nemesis, Ohio State scored in the final seconds of their annual grudge match — thus ruining Penn State’s chances of becoming national champions.

I needed some good news to close out the night, and that’s exactly what I got.

My husband, Jeff, and I are friends with comedian, Dana Goldberg , who always does the live auction and announces the raffle winner. So, after the ticket was pulled, they handed it to Dana to announce the winner.

I just kept saying, “She’s gonna say Alan Uphold. She’s gonna say Alan Uphold.”

And then Dana looked at the card she’d been handed and said, “Oh my God. I don’t believe it. IT’S ALAN UPHOLD!”

Bonnie, Jeff and I all leapt up out of our seats (I think I actually knocked my chair over) and started jumping up and down and screaming. I know people who have won raffles, or at casinos, I even know someone who won a car at another organization’s raffle, but I had never won anything in my life.

It was an incredibly exhilarating feeling.

What has been your favorite trip or moment in your car?
I think our favorite family moment in our Lexus GS300 was a road trip we took up the California coast during the entire month of September 2020. COVID-related restrictions limited the things we could do, and the high temperatures in Palm Springs, where we live, had been over 100 degrees since July 1.

We needed to escape. So we packed some clothes, filled up a cooler, put our pup, Tucker, in his crate, and headed up the California coast. We stopped in Ojai, Santa Barbara, Cambria, Carmel, Santa Cruz, Montecito and drove all the way up to Eureka and the Redwood Forest.

Some days we drove for just a couple of hours, other days were longer drives with lots of stops along the way.

But Tucker loved every minute of our trip…and so did we.

Why was it important for you to purchase raffle tickets and donate to the HRC Foundation?
Just because Joe Biden is headed to the White House, we would be foolish to think that our struggle ends here. There are 73 million Americans who looked at the past four years of Trump’s racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic bigotry and thought, “Yeah, that’s the America I wanna live in.” Those people are not going away.

Our fight is far from over — and HRC Foundation’s work is more important now than it has ever been.

Jeff and I are major donors, and we continue to support HRC and HRC Foundation however we can. I hope you will join us by giving whatever you can.

What would you say to encourage others to purchase sweepstakes tickets this year?
Just like the lottery slogan says, “You gotta play to win.”

The night we won our Lexus back in 2017, as Jeff and I were walking into the ballroom to take our seats, I said to him, “Crap, I forgot to buy a raffle ticket. I’ll meet you in there.”

I bought ONE ticket for $100, and I WON! And this year they're only $10.

But the best part is that the car is generously donated by Lexus which means that EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR you spend goes directly to the work of HRC Foundation.

So even if you don’t win a car, either way, we ALL win!