YMCA plans Senior Appreciation Night for Los Alamos seniors

Fuller Lodge will host Senior Appreciation Night for Los Alamos High School seniors on Saturday, May 23, in a free, alcohol-free sendoff that ends with pancake breakfast at the Betty Ehart Senior Center. The gathering runs from 6 p.m. Saturday to noon Sunday, giving graduating seniors a local place to mark the milestone with family, friends and neighbors.

Graduating seniors and one friend are invited to the annual celebration, which begins with a barbecue at Fuller Lodge and is built around activities, prizes and a raffle. The county is framing the event as a safe option during a season when graduation celebrations can bring added risk, especially for young people moving through the last weeks of high school and into summer.

That safety focus goes back to the event’s roots. Senior Appreciation Night was created in 1984 after local reporting in the 1970s and early 1980s documented drinking and driving among youths around graduation, including mountain parties and other unsafe post-graduation gatherings. Community leaders, led by then acting Police Chief Gary Bequette, organized the first SAN as a supervised alternative meant to keep seniors alive and out of trouble.

More than 40 years later, the event remains one of Los Alamos’ clearest examples of a community-wide graduation tradition. A 2023 report said SAN typically serves more than 350 students, and a 2025 item described it as a community-powered celebration funded entirely by donations. The event has also depended on a wide network of sponsors, including Los Alamos County Recreation Department, The Family YMCA, the DWI Planning Council, Kiwanis Club of Los Alamos, Los Alamos Public Schools, Atomic City Transit, First United Methodist Church and roughly 40 other local organizations and businesses.

The Family YMCA, at 1450 Iris St. in Los Alamos, is again helping lead the effort. The county says volunteers are still needed, and community partners interested in helping can contact the Recreation Division at (505) 662-8170 or the YMCA at (505) 662-3100. For seniors, the event offers one more locally rooted celebration before graduation gives way to whatever comes next.