Area COVID-19 nurse wins free Dr Pepper for a year

The Dr Pepper Museum celebrated its 29th birthday this week by giving away a year supply of America's oldest soft drink.

Kayla Vinyard, 28, of Corsicana, won a year supply of Dr Pepper Monday, courtesy of Keurig Dr Pepper Waco, after entering the contest on Facebook.

"I entered in the middle of the night," said Vinyard. " I just feel really blessed and really lucky, my entire family is addicted to Dr Pepper."

The museum opened its doors to the public on May 11, 1991.

May 11th is also significant to Waco because it's the anniversary of the deadly 1953 tornado that destroyed much of the downtown area where the museum is located.

"We always have a big celebration on that day in which the tornado badly damaged the bottling plant building out here at the museum," said Farrell. "The founders kind of had that in mind and opened the museum on that day in remembrance of that, but also as a happy thing to now have on that anniversary moving forward."

For the first time since it opened in 1991, the museum was unable to spend it's birthday with fans in-person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so a virtual party was held on its Facebook page.

"It was definitely different, but it was an interesting opportunity to really engage our audience who may not have otherwise been able to attend the event if we had it in-person like normal," said Farrell.

Prizes were given away virtually: a Waco-themed basket was given away to a local resident, a Dr Pepper-themed basket went to someone out-of-state, but the big prize went to Vinyard who was randomly picked out of entries that came in from all over the world.

"She was awesome, it was really fun getting to deliver that news to her," said Farrell.

Vinyard said she was working when she working when she got the news.

"I was very excited but I was at work, so I had to tone it down a little bit," said Vinyard.

A mother of two kids age five and one, Vinyard is a nurse working in the COVID-19 unit at an area hospital.

"It's been very stressful on our family," she said.

She says the prize couldn't have come at a better time.

"With me being a nurse, it's kind of a little bit of a pick me up," said Vinyard. "I work on the COVID-19 unit at our hospital and you see a lot of bad stuff, but having just a little bit of positivity really helps during this time."

She says she'll definitely drink some of the soda, but she'll probably end up sharing the supply with her family, friends and co-workers.

"I really like Dr Pepper, mostly because it reminds me of my grandpa and growing up drinking it at his house," said Vinyard. "It brings back a lot of really good childhood memories for me."

Vinyard isn't the first to have hundreds of cans of Dr Pepper delivered to their doorstep; the museum gave someone a year supply of Dr Pepper in 2019, too.

"We are so excited to give that away again, we did that last year for the first time, gave it away to our 2-millionth visitor," said Farrell. "We have not had another million visitors since last year, but we wanted to give away another year supply of Dr Pepper."

The museum reopened last week after shutting down temporarily due to COVID-19.

"The museum is a non-profit here in Waco, and we rely on our visitors coming through the doors to keep us going and able to do these fun things," said Farrell. "So to kind of go with our event this year, we did set a $10,000 fundraising goal."

The Dr Pepper Museum will be accepting "birthday gifts" in the form of donations through the end of the week.