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Having fun, playing games and helping kids

MILFORD – Benjamin and Alyssa Kaufold are in college, but they’ve been playing the arcade games at FunWorld in Nashua since they were five.

Ben loves Basket Fortune, Monsterdrop and Ms. Pac Man. His twin sister enjoys Wheel Deal and Deep Freeze. Over the years both have spent hours teaming up in Deadstorm Pirates. Which meant the Milford siblings were accumulating many prize tickets.

Several years ago they started to joke about donating them to a good cause. Then they began to take that idea seriously and committed to earning 100,000 tickets. They picked the Nashua Children’s Home as their cause, "because we were kids ourselves and wanted to help other kids," Benjamin said in an email.

At first the idea was to redeem the tickets for typical toys at FunWorld and donate them. But when they asked the home’s directors if there was anything the children would prefer, they suggested a television. So this summer the family used the value of their tickets to buy a 55-inch TV that is now in the home’s community room.

Benjamin is majoring in chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and Alyson is majoring in marine biology at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. They still go to FunWorld and went to play after they presented the TV to the home.

"I never thought our love for arcade games would turn into something so meaningful," Alyssa said in an email. "I love that our family pastime has helped kids in less fortunate situations."