During the Subaru Share the Love event, Harley Swain Subaru raised more than $5,000 for the Hermiston Senior Center and chose to donate an additional $2,500 to the center.

Harley Swain Subaru is sharing the love with a large donation to the Hermiston Senior Center.

At 11 a.m. Saturday, the family-owned Hermiston auto dealership will present $5,390 raised from Subaru’s Share the Love event and an additional $2,500 from the business to the senior center, which will use the funds for furniture and other needed supplies.

Harley Swain Subaru General Manager Mike Boedigheimer said he was pleased with the amount of money raised during the event and that the business will give it to such a deserving local cause.

“Subaru, for the past five or six years, has had the Share the Love program, where people would come in and purchase cars, and they could make a donation of $250 to several different charities,” he said. “This year, they decided to have the stores pick something in their community and give it to.”

He said Perry Hawkins, who has been helping the senior center with the new facility being planned, had approached him about donating to the center, and when local causes could be added to the list of national charities for the Share the Love event, Boedigheimer said it was a perfect fit. Each person who purchased a new Subaru selected how the $250 donation would be divided between about six different choices, he said, and about 95 percent of the people chose the senior center.

Boedigheimer said Harley Swain Subaru chose to add its own funds to the money raised because the senior center is important to the community.

“The seniors are a big part of our community,” he said. “The community is what makes our living, obviously the customers, and we just wanted to give back. We figured that was a good place.”

Boedigheimer said his mother, Eva Swain, and her late husband, Harley, started the business in 1976 in the same location, 1915 N. First St., Hermiston.

Eva Swain said donating to the senior center has been her favorite Share the Love donation.

“We do have lots of seniors in the area, and maybe they don’t get enough,” she said. “Maybe people don’t think about helping them out as much as other charities. We’re glad to do it. The community has been really good to us, so we want to give back to them because they’ve given to us. We’re very grateful to the community.”

Boedigheimer said Harley Swain Subaru is one of the longest family-owned dealerships in the area, with repeat customers who have been coming to the business for many years. He said the business sells new Subarus and a variety of makes and models of used vehicles and will soon be expanding with bigger service and sales departments.

“Business has been really good,” he said. “Subaru, obviously, they’ve been growing for the last three or four years. They are not making the cars fast enough. It’s been really good.”

Harley Swain Subaru is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays.