Why you want to 'Live like Liv.' 'Bridgerton' (music) arrives. What's a Super Lawyer?
PLUS: Our neighbors in Warrensburg put on a garage sale so big it's like a 'national holiday.'
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In this Oct. 7 edition:
Exclusive: ‘Live like Liv’ rally cry for kindness sweeps Saratoga; join the movement Saturday at Kelly’s Angels gala.
Last chance: String quartet made famous on Bridgerton hits UPH.
Bravo: ‘Super’ Saratoga attorney makes a name for himself.
Lighter note: Our neighbors in Warrensburg put on a garage sale so big it’s like a ‘national holiday.’
‘Live like Liv’ Sat. with Kelly’s Angels and make dreams come true
After losing her teenage daughter Liv to cancer, Mellisa Allen tells her story and invites you to Saturday’s Kelly’s Angels gala to help raise money for other cancer-stricken families.
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SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — I challenge anyone to spend even five minutes with Mellisa Allen and not leave with a full heart and a determination to “Live like Liv.”
“Liv” is her bright and beautiful daughter Olivia, who lost her battle with leukemia on March 28, 2024 — way too young, at age 18.
And you can “Live like Liv” — both in the bigger sense of the movement in honor of a “love bug” of a young woman who never gave up, and this Saturday at the special “15 years of Love” Kelly’s Angels gala at 6 p.m. at the City Center.
“The work they do is incredible,” Mellisa says of the nonprofit founded by Channel 13’s Mark Mulholland to “bring smiles to kids and families dealing with or having lost a battle to cancer or other life-threatening illnesses.” “Whether it’s scholarships, fund grants, or angel aid, they do things for families before, during and after. The missing piece for a lot of families is life after — you don’t want to think about it, but it’s so important…the ability to have a little piece of joy at the same time as all the sadness — even if it’s for a short period of time — [Mark] gave that to us. I couldn’t be more thankful to his organization.”
The Allen family’s journey with Kelly’s Angels began when Liv was diagnosed with leukemia and recommended for the Kelly’s Angels Fund grant. Her wish? To see country star Morgan Wallen in concert.
“Unless you’re in the hospital setting regularly, you might not know how important music becomes,” Mellisa says. “Liv listened to Morgan Wallen daily, hourly. Just thinking about it, makes me want to cry. I wish Morgan Wallen would know, because it really is what carried her through on her darkest days.”
Kelly’s Angels granted her wish. Liv chose the concert — Tampa, in the state she loved so much that she had planned to go to college there, at Florida State — and planned the whole thing, down to the seat assignments.
Sadly, her health soon declined, and the Saratoga Springs High School graduate passed away before the concert. But the magic of the Kelly’s Angels gift wasn’t done — Sophia Allen, now 17, didn’t want to see her big sister’s dream go unfulfilled.
“Sophia, Sophia’s best friend and I went in Liv’s place,” Mellisa says. “We got to the stadium Liv picked out — in the seats that she picked out on her own — and right across the stadium from us is a huge ‘2020 LIV’ with a football. I don’t even know really what it means, but it said, ‘LIV.’
“It was the most beautiful night.”
Since then, the Allens — Mellisa, Sophia and Liv’s dad, Chuck — have done the Kelly’s Angels Mother-Lovin’ 5k and formed the biggest team for both of the last two years. There’s even a Kelly’s Angels “Live like Liv” scholarship in the memory of Olivia Grace Allen, a rally cry to encourage students at 14 Saratoga schools to value “perseverance, positivity, kindness, and commitment to helping others.”
The Allens will be at the gala this Saturday, October 11, from 6 to 11 p.m. at the Saratoga Springs City Center. All proceeds benefit Kelly’s Angels to help Capital Region children who have lost a parent or sibling to cancer or other illness or are battling a life-threatening condition. For more info and to buy your tickets, please visit kellysangelsinc.org.
Pop hits like you’ve never heard ‘em before (unless you watch ‘Bridgerton’)
Vitamin String Quartet (VSQ) hits UPH on Thursday, so this is your last chance to scoop up tickets for one of the most popular string ensembles in the world.
Known for their spellbinding classical/contemporary crossovers, VSQ hits the stage with beautiful covers of Lady Gaga and The Weeknd, a style made famous on the Netflix phenom Bridgerton — for which they’ve covered groups such as Nirvana.
“They play a lot of like songs from Bridgerton and Taylor Swift, but it’s with strings,” says UPH director Teddy Foster. “Get your girls together and come on down. You’ll know the music, but it’s a whole different vibe.”
To purchase tickets, visit atuph.org.
Saratoga has a Super Lawyer in its midst.
How Saratoga attorney Michael D. Billok landed his prestigious new title.
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Michael D. Billok, an attorney with Bond, Schoeneck & King’s Saratoga Springs office, has been recognized in the 2025 New York Super Lawyers Upstate Edition in Employment and Labor, the firm announced this week.
Attorneys who made the exclusive annual list are selected by their peers based on professional achievements.
Billok regularly represents employers in state and federal court, defending against actions alleging violations of employment laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, including class actions, as well as collective and class actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and New York Labor Law (NYLL).
In addition to his achievements in the field of law, Billok is a veteran. He is a 1996 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and was a submarine officer in the United States Navy until 2004. He served onboard the USS NEVADA (SSBN 733) based out of Bangor, Washington; instructed students at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Unit in Ballston Spa, New York; and was the Submarine Manpower Analyst for the office of the Chief of Naval Personnel in Washington, D.C. Before returning to upstate New York and joining Bond, Schoeneck & King, he was an attorney at the Washington, D.C. office of a multinational law firm.
Bond, Schoeneck & King PLLC is an AmLaw 200 law firm with more than 300 lawyers serving companies, nonprofits, public sector entities and individuals in a broad range of practice areas.
Bond has 14 offices, including 10 in New York State, as well as in Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Kansas. For more information visit bsk.com.
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How small hamlet handles 70k at world-famous garage sale
Our neighbors in Warrensburg see massive influx of people at ‘holiday’ event, but say one group of regulars stayed home.
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Just north of Lake George, the hamlet of Warrensburg — with a population of under 4,000 — hosted more than 70,000 visitors last weekend for its annual, trademark event of the year. The four-day-long (Oct. 2-5) “World’s Largest Garage Sale” brought bumper-to-bumper traffic on Main Street, sidewalks packed for miles by bargain hunters, and vendors and shoppers who enjoyed perfect weather for over ten hours a day.
Everything from antiques and books to perfume, clothes and furniture were for up grabs on a three-mile stretch of at least a thousand residential garage sales, according to The Sun Community News, alongside food and drink trunks. Vendors were a combo of regulars and first-timers.
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Not only did shoppers flood through the town over the weekend from Friday through Sunday, but thousands also arrived several days early in order to take advantage of “early pickings.” Bargain-hunters began arriving to town one or even two days before the sale officially started, with many surveying items for sale before dawn on Friday. Some vendors told The Sun that Canadian shoppers stayed home this year, causing Saturday’s numbers to decline a bit.
Julie Garcia, founder of Hudson & Main Cannabis on Main Street, was in the center of the action all weekend. She has been in the space for nine years and calls the sale “a great boost for our local economy” (the sale has generated roughly $10 million since it began in the late ‘70s, according to The Sun). Hudson & Main invited cannabis vendors to set up and market outside of its store, something Garcia hopes to expand upon next year. “We saw thousands of people,” she says. “We want to take advantage of that.”
In many ways, the garage sale felt like a national holiday in the hamlet, with public facilities all affected by the traffic and tourism surge. Even the Warrensburg Town Hall was closed the Friday of the event. At least six buses shuttled packs of people back and forth from their parking spots at the Warren County Fairgrounds on Schroon River Road into downtown Warrensburg.
“You can feel the energy building up over the week prior,” says Garcia. “There’s a lot of planning. And then a big sigh when it’s over.”
Warrensburg earned the “World’s Largest Garage Sale” title in the ‘80s from the Guinness Book of World Records.
ICYMI!
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