Senator Patty Murray's Golden Tennis Shoe Awards are supposed to be a nice feel-good event—an opportunity for the senator to raise some campaign cash while honoring people who have beat the odds to make a difference. Not this year. At this year's awards ceremony, held on June 1 at the convention center, something surprising—and heartbreaking—occurred.

Seattle police officer Denise "Cookie" Bouldin, one of the year's three recipients, accepted the award for her work using chess to steer Rainier Valley kids away from violence. She spoke about how the game helps teach patience and good decision making to kids who need both in order to survive in a rough part of the city. She talked about how her chess students line up outside her donated Rainier Beach Library space before club meetings, how they then come to her saying, "I'm not smart; chess is for smart people," and leave saying, "Detective Cookie, I'm smart!" And then, standing there in full police uniform, she choked up. Detective Cookie told the crowd that she'd run out of funding for her chess program. It was great to receive this award and all, she told the crowd, but the chess club would have to end this summer due to lack of money.

You could feel the pained shock in the room, followed by everyone silently thinking: How much can it cost to run a chess club? Certainly there's enough money at this luncheon to get it back on its feet. David Axelrod, a strategist for President Obama's reelection effort and one of the speakers at the event, told the crowd: "I know—I know—because of the quality of the people in this room, that that chess program is going to reopen." Murray offered similar encouragement to her donors to step up.

Detective Cookie needed $6,000 to restart the club this summer. She received over $2,000 from Murray donors who swarmed around her after the event, writing checks on the spot. Then, after I posted about her plight on Slog, The Stranger's blog, and followed up with information on how Slog readers could donate, Detective Cookie hit her target.

In a voice message on June 2, she told me: "You and your readers—this could not have happened without them, and without Patty Murray and her supporters this could not have happened. The Strangerstepped up to the plate. You guys did good. You just are angels. All your people."

She thinks she'll be able to keep Detective Cookie's Urban Youth Chess Club, as it's known, running through the fall on all the donations she's received. But she admits that's not a long-term solution. "Once my funding's over, then I'm struggling again," Detective Cookie told me on June 6. "My goal, and my dream, was just to have a continuous fund that comes in."

Problem is, she's a police officer—not an expert fundraiser.

This, in the end, is the biggest problem the chess club faces: solving the riddle of long-term funding. And, in typical Detective Cookie fashion, she's all ears. "I read every little blog that gave me advice, and I took it to heart, and I thank everybody for being there for me," she said. She still doesn't have a solid long-term solution, though, so she offered Stranger readers her e-mail address so they can keep pitching ideas her way: cookiecookie1010@yahoo.com.

Want to send money her way? Donations can be made on behalf of Detective Cookie's Urban Youth Chess Club to the Seattle Neighborhood Group at www.sngi.org or by mail at 1810 E Yesler Way, Seattle, WA 98122 (Phone: 323-9666).