Hands shot in the air Monday night in the Portales High School cafeteria as local residents made bids on a ceiling fan.

 Local auctioneer Clint Walker raised the price of the item once again, jumping from $140 to $150.

“Going once, going twice, sold for $150,” he yelled across the room.

The ceiling fan was taken to its buyer at the back of the room.

Alisa Boswell: Portales News-Tribune

Portales High School junior Kacie Terry, right, presents a gift basket with coffee items to Portales resident Joe Randall Monday night during the high school’s auction, which the junior class was hoping would raise $2,500 to $3,000 for prom to add to the $1,600 made by the dinner held prior to the auction.

The event was the Portales High School junior class’ annual dinner and auction to raise money for the year’s prom.

“The community really went out of their way to help us get items for the auction,” said junior class president Stormi Hancock, who coordinated the event. “We had to sell tickets for the dinner and we got a lot of businesses to donate for the auction and parents baked.”

Hancock and class sponsor and high school office assistant Phoebe Gomez said the dinner tickets brought in $1,600 and they were hoping the auction would add $2,500 to $3,000 more.

“You can get a decent prom for $4,000 and you can get a crazy prom for $7,000, but that’s asking too much,” Gomez said, laughing. “We were really grateful to the businesses.”

From gift baskets and gift certificates to ceiling fans, household items, art work and jackets of almost $100 value adorned tables in the cafeteria Monday night, all donated by local businesses to support the class of 2013.

Along with the items donated by businesses were numerous pies and cakes made and donated by Portales High parents.

“I’m anxious to see how the auction goes,” Gomez said at the start of the evening. “There’s a lot of good stuff out there. And it gets really competitive with the baked goods.”

She laughed, adding that one year, a cake sold for $150.

“The hardest part was having everyone get their tickets in and getting everyone involved,” Hancock said of preparing the event. “But we were a team and we still are. We’ve got juniors out there now being waiters and waitresses.”

Hancock said she was concerned because few tickets had been sold for the dinner, but in the last week before the dinner, juniors finally made numerous sales with 310 tickets being sold total.

Alisa Boswell: Portales News-Tribune

Portales High School junior class president Stormi Hancock, right, laughs as she jokes with junior Jarret Faust as he fixes himself a plate of barbecue Monday night in the school cafeteria. The juniors held a dinner prior to the annual junior class auction, which is held each year to raise money for the prom.

Hancock said she sold 50 tickets and sold some more tickets for other classmates to help them out.

“I think with all the items we have, we’ll come out better than I though we would,” she said of the auction.

“The schools, we hit our (local) businesses up a lot and here we go again and they don’t tell us no,” Gomez said. “They could have said no because they’ve already done this or given to that, but they don’t.”

“We had people from Dora and Elida donate,” Hancock added. “I get goose bumps just thinking about it (the generosity).”

The final amount raised was not available at press time.