STI International - Making Wishes Come True

By Micheal Bane

It is a truism that our lives turn on finely jeweled bearings, the gears and levers and springs that mark our hours and minutes an seconds spinning quietly behind veiled curtains. We only become aware of this great mechanism when the curtain slips, when one cog or lever, as finely balanced as hammer and sear, clicks a single click, and our universe moves.

For Dave and Shirley Skinner, years of work had paid big dividends. After three kids, three grandchildren, and two successful companies, the pair had reached an enviable place. Their mutual love of IPSC shooting had lead first Shirley, and then Dave ("She got me into a lot of things over my head." he says fondly) to a new and struggling gun company, STI International. The company had already established an enviable name for itself in the rarified circles of IPSC competition, with more and more shooters choosing the upstart STI's polymer-framed raceguns. With business-savvy Dave now at the helm of the company and Shirley's supporting, plans were made for a new manufacturing facility in Georgetown, TX, near their big new house. The future could not have looked brighter.

Bit driven by unseen springs, gears turn, levers move and time ticks away. At a routine self-examination, Shirley Skinner finds what every woman dreads above all else. There is a lump. The gears and levers seem to move a little faster now, ratcheting one fearful notch after the other. Biopsies, surgeries, interventions, treatments and a final grim prognosis. It is as if the old world has ceased to exist and a newer, harsher one taken its place. The gears turn, minutes ticking by, while Shirley Skinner fights a battle she cannot win. Dave Skinner divides his time between he and his wife's newest company and her care. In 1997, the new building is completed, the company profiled as one of the best of the firearms business. Shirley Skinner manages to work a few months in the new building that she and her husband have crafted from their dreams.

And then it is over, the gears making one final click. On May 16, 1998, after almost three years of battling, Shirley Skinner succumbs to her disease, leaving Dave and the children the long lonely road ahead.

How do we mark the passing of a loved one, of a friend, of a mother, of a grandmother? And if we are facing the inevitable (which, of course, we all are), how might we want to he remembered? Maybe, if we're lucky enough, we get a chance to make our own suggestion before that final gear clicks into place. And maybe, if we're very lucky, we get a chance to reach out to help others who, inevitably, must pass this way.

THE MATCH
As Cheryl Leck tells it, The Shirley Skinner Make-A-Wish Foundation charity match came about as the direct result of a conversation with her longtime friend Shirley. Cheryl, along with husband Michael, runs Leck's Guns, suppliers of all manner of competition gear. She was also extremely active in matches throughout Texas. Not surprisingly, Cheryl was burned out.

"I told my husband I was burned out on matches and listening to people complain," she says. "And he said why not run a charity match for something different?"

Cheryl liked the idea, and tentatively mentioned it to Shirley suggesting one of the breast cancer charities.

Shirley was adamant -- absolutely not.

"Shirley told me that the only thing worse than being in the situation she was in was a child being in the same situation," Cheryl says. "Shirley said that she had had a good life; had a husband and children and grandchildren. But a child in her situation had nothing to look back on. Surely, Shirley told me, there must be a charity that helps children in this awful place."

So Cheryl Leck went searching for a very special charity, one that helped children facing the unthinkable.
What she found was the Make-A-Wish Foundation, an organization dedicated to granting terminally ill children their fondest wish. It is the kind of charity that all charities should aspire to be, according to Cheryl. Low overhead and lots of volunteers willing to do what it takes to brighten children's lives.

Would Make-A-Wish, Cheryl asked the local chapter, be interested in being the recipient of the proceeds from a charity pistol match? Make-A-Wish was honored to accept -- making dreams come true takes money, lots of money.

So Cheryl Leck set out to make a match that would be true to her friend. The first Shirley Skinner Make-A-Wish charity match, held three years ago, netted $6,000; the second, $14,000 and the third an amazing $l8,000 -- not because of the amount, but because the Lecks themselves were struggling with the fact that their home and business had been swept away in the floods that plagued Texas this year. Despite their own personal tragedy, The Make-A-Wish match happened; the money went to the children.

Next year's match is scheduled for April 1-2 in San Antonio, Texas. There are slots for 150 shooters, and the $60 entry fee includes a banquet.

'Everybody donates everything," Cheryl says.

There's more to the match than the eight stages of fire, however. "The first year, we had a little auction, just auctioning off things people bought to the match," she says. "That's become a really big part of the Make-A-Wish match."

Last year, for instance, someone donated a dozen Triple-Grade-A roses, the most expensive of those flowers. The roses were bundled in packages of three each, which Cheryl hoped would sell for as much as $60. The roses sold for $l00-300 a package.

"So many shooters are giving us prizes they've picked up at prize tables around the country to auction off for MakeA-Wish," she says. "We welcome anything anyone would like to give us."

But there's one more thing. This year. as every year, shooters get a chance to win the hottest of custom guns. This year's big offering is a Johnny Lim custom racegun complete with the newest hottest trickest C-More sight.

THE GUN
It's a beauty, isn't it?" says Johnny Lim from his shop in Fremont, California. Limcat Custom has long been known for it's "no holds barred" custom guns. When offered a chance to create a masterpiece to be auctioned off for the Make-A-Wish match. Johnny Lim jumped at the chance. "I'm thinking of calling it the Panther Turbo Twin Side Port LRI." he says, "It's cool."

And cool it is.

Lim started with one of STI's already trick polymer-framed Commander length .38 Supers. After making sure every part of the gun was perfect, he started his own work. First, he added a new version of his acclaimed Turbo compensator, the Turbo 3. The six-port comp has an enviable reputation of being one of the most shootable, fastest-handling comps for full-blown raceguns. The new comp is "a lot lighter, which results in better pointability."

To that Lim added a pair of side ports, cut into the slide and barrel just before the comp. "I've always been pretty amazed at the way the side ports on AR- 15 compensators worked." he says. Even without any ports in the top, the side ports seemed to have a major effect on recoil and muzzle rise."

The result is a racegun that shoots really soft, with a resulting loss in muzzle velocity of only 20 feet per second (based on a 125-grain VV-based load; it clocked out at a power factor of 183 before the side ports were cut, then 180 pf after the cuts).

"I like using the Commander length gun," he says, "even though you're going to get a little more kick. It makes up for it in the way the gun handles."

The gun is topped by a new Limcat Custom one-side steel mount for the newest C-More, which features positive clicks on the switch adjusting the red dot intensity-a feature long asked for my shooters.

"The steel mount, which I wanted to look almost like a part of the frame, moves a little more weight to the center of the gun," he says. "Which gives you a little more balance."

The looks of the Limcat LR-l, of course, speak for themselves-just take a look at these gorgeous pictures.

The flats of the slide and scope mount are highly polished, with Limcat's new "bullet" serrations along the slide and onto the comp. The gun looks amazingly well-balanced, unusual for a raceguns, which often appear to have escaped from a Buck Rogers episode. Hammer and tigger are standard STI units, fitted to a crisp 1.5-pound trigger pull.

"I wanted to make a gun that looked cool, but didn't overdo it," Johnny Lim explains. "It's tricky, but it doesn't look tricky. I didn't want to make this gun look like a Christmas tree. It just feels smooth in your hand -- even a baby could shoot it."

If you've got $2895, you can buy the LR-1 as it is. Or you can buy a raffle ticket for $5 (even if you don't make it to the match). That also includes a chance at the nine other items on the raffle table, including a custom AR-15. Such a deal!

And, by the way, Cheryl reminds everyone that the Make-A-Wish match is unique among large competitions in that it features a "No Complaints" policy-no arbitration fee; no arbitration; no complaints; no whining. "The shooters love it," she says proudly. GG