Each July, a date on the calendar on Roberts Bayou belongs to a cause that started with one mother’s search for services that didn’t exist. High Hopes 4 Autism, the Elberta-based not-for-profit founded in 2009 by Rachael Mueller after her daughter was diagnosed on the autism spectrum, has turned an unlikely venue — the famously unpretentious Pirate’s Cove Yacht Club in Josephine — into one of Baldwin County’s most successful charity engines, anchored by a Jeep drawdown that has raised six figures in a single afternoon.
What High Hopes Does
High Hopes 4 Autism provides Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA, services to local families affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder. Founded in 2009 by Mueller, a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, the organization was created to fill a void: families in south Alabama who needed scientifically grounded, individualized therapy for their children had nowhere nearby to turn.
Each child’s program at High Hopes is built around their individual needs, using scientifically supported procedures. The work covers a wide range of skills — classroom readiness, social skills, cooperation, motor and vocal imitation, requesting, labeling, and communication. The point is not a single breakthrough but steady, measurable progress in the skills a child needs to participate fully in family life and school.
In recent years the organization has operated on the campus of St. Benedict Catholic School in Elberta, a partnership that gives its clients something money can’t easily buy: the chance to practice social skills in a naturally occurring traditional school environment, alongside typically developing classmates, rather than in a clinic room.
The Drawdown: How Pirate’s Cove Raises Six Figures
The fundraising formula that made the organization’s name is the Jeep drawdown, staged annually at Pirate’s Cove on Roberts Bayou in Josephine, the boat-up dive bar on the Perdido Key side of the state line. The mechanics are simple and merciless. A limited number of numbered tickets are sold — 600 in a recent year — and a wheel or bingo-style apparatus eliminates participants one by one until only ten remain. Then the real game begins: the last ten start negotiating to buy or sell their potentially winning tickets, weighing whether to hold or fold as the field shrinks to the final two or three.
At stake in recent editions have been two Jeep Wranglers, which start around $30,000 each, and the prize pool has translated into serious money for the organization — more than $100,000 raised in a single drawdown year. Add live music at midday and again in the late afternoon, a crowd that fills the Cove from lunch until the last elimination, and a cause that half the Peninsula seems personally connected to, and the math of the event explains itself.
The drawdown format itself is a Gulf Coast tradition, well suited to small nonprofits. Because ticket sales are capped, everyone in the room knows the odds, and the drama of the endgame — the buying, the selling, the split-the-pot bargaining — keeps a crowd engaged in a way a silent auction never could. At Pirate’s Cove, with boats stacked along the bayou and goats on their own island within sight of the stage, the atmosphere does half the work.
Why the Work Matters in Baldwin County
Autism diagnoses have risen nationally for decades, and the need for early intervention services has far outpaced what public systems provide. For families in South Alabama, the nearest specialized providers have often meant long drives and long waitlists. A clinic in Elberta — a small farming community between Foley and the Perdido Bay line — changed the geography of that problem for hundreds of Baldwin County children.
The nonprofit model matters as much as the location. ABA therapy is intensive, and costs that insurance may not fully cover can run far beyond what many families can carry. Community-funded organizations like High Hopes, sustained by events like the drawdown and by donations, exist precisely to close that gap.
An Event Built for a Dive Bar With a Mission
Over the years the July event weekend at Pirate’s Cove has become a fixture of the summer calendar: live music starting at 11 a.m. and again around 4 p.m., the first Jeep drawdown around noon “Cove time,” and a crowd that mixes families of children served by the organization with thousands of others who come for the music, the water, and the chance to watch two Jeeps drive away with two lucky ticket holders.
The organization continues to accept donations year-round, and information about its programs, its Elberta campus, and its fundraising calendar is available through its website and social channels. For the families it serves, the arithmetic is straightforward: every ticket sold, every elimination round, and every Wrangler given away converts a bayou afternoon into therapy hours, school readiness, and skills that last a lifetime.
High Hopes 4 Autism is located in Elberta, Alabama. Its annual High Hopes for Autism benefit weekend at Pirate’s Cove Yacht Club in Josephine features live music and the two-Jeep drawdown that has become the organization’s signature fundraiser.
The Numbers Behind the Need
The need High Hopes addresses keeps growing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that about one in 36 American children is identified with autism spectrum disorder, up from roughly one in 150 two decades ago — a rise driven largely by broader screening and better identification. Diagnosis rates that climb that fast inevitably outrun the supply of qualified therapists, and rural and small-town families feel the shortage first. In Baldwin County, where families are spread across a large, fast-growing county and the nearest metro providers sit across Mobile Bay, a local clinic with a school-based setting is often the difference between consistent therapy and none.
ABA itself has become the most widely used, evidence-based approach for teaching skills to children with autism. It is also intensive — programs often run many hours per week for months or years — which is why the funding question shadows every family the moment a diagnosis arrives. Community fundraisers like the Pirate’s Cove drawdown don’t just write checks; they buy continuity, the thing that makes early intervention work.
How to Help
Support for High Hopes 4 Autism takes a few forms. Ticket purchases for the annual drawdown, direct donations, and business sponsorships of the event weekend all flow into the same mission. The organization also welcomes volunteers on event days, when a crowd that can number in the thousands needs parking help, ticket tables, and crowd wrangling. Families seeking services can reach the organization directly for information on enrollment and current program openings.