Adult-sized ‘bake’ sale

Delaney DeCinces, her best friend Taylor Craig, Delaney’s sisters Paige and Riley, and Taylor’s brother Jordan are ordinary American kids.

But a random act of kindness on their part has inspired an adult to go beyond expectations and help the people of Haiti recover from last week’s earthquake.

“We heard there’s a big huge earthquake in Haiti and that people needed medicine and food and money for medical care,” Delaney, 9, and Taylor, 10, said in one voice. “We felt sorry.”

So they came up with a plan to sell baked goods and raise money for the children in Haiti.

With the help of Taylor’s mother, Kendra Craig, they made batches of cupcakes, brownies and cookies and stood on a street corner in Costa Mesa for an hour before the rain started to fall Sunday.

They sold their sweets for a dollar each.

Along with their cookies, cupcakes and brownies, the children displayed signs that read: “Help Haiti, save a life. Give a helping hand. All money will be donated.”

“People just donated money, some people donated $20,” Taylor said.

In the end, they raised $97.

Then something bigger happened. The kids’ act of generosity inspired Delaney’s dad, Tim DeCinces, a Newport Beach resident and owner of the Beach Pit BBQ restaurant chain, to donate all of the proceeds from Thursday’s sales at his three restaurants to the Haiti post-quake relief effort.

“I thought if these kids can do a bake sale, we have three restaurants and we can do a lot more,” said DeCinces, who is the son of Doug DeCinces, a former big-league player with the Angels and Baltimore Orioles.

DeCinces decided to send all of Thursday’s proceeds from his restaurant’s Costa Mesa, Tustin and Orange locations to Lake-Forest-based Peace Relief, a nonprofit organization with members traveling to Haiti to help bring relief there.

“When the weather is like this, people generally don’t go out and eat and restaurants lose money,” DeCinces said. “I figured, ‘Why don’t we lose some more money and do something really good?’”

Despite Thursday’s heavy rain, people were coming out to eat at Beach Pit BBQ’s locations to help the people of Haiti.

At least nine Costa Mesa firefighters came out for lunch to support Beach Pit BBQ’s efforts.

Although the restaurant opens at 11 a.m and doesn’t close till 9 p.m., by noon the Costa Mesa location had already made $1,600. By closing, about $16,000 total was raised.

DeCinces had said earlier in the day he was hoping to write a check for $20,000 for Peace Relief’s Haiti effort.

“It’s a local Orange County group and we know that the money is directly going to Haiti,” DeCinces said.