This drawing by mogul Donald Trump — of "You're fired!" fame — is among those set for the next auction. Trump's work depicts the New York City skyline.

Doodles courtesy of Sam Harrington

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One man's request for celebrity-drawn doodles or caricatures has helped raise more than $15,000 in the past few years for Prince Elementary School, but he hasn't had the response he's had in previous years.

Sam Harrington, a behavioral-intervention monitor at the school, began soliciting doodles, cartoons, caricatures or any other drawings or writings from celebrities and athletes more than three years ago. They are auctioned to raise money for Prince, 125 E. Prince Road.

Celebrity Doodle Auctions in 2005 and 2006 brought in $15,500 for the school, which used the money to support after-school programs.

There was no auction in 2007 because Harrington could not find a place to host the auction.

Money raised at the next auction, which hasn't been scheduled, will go toward buying band instruments — the school has 30 instruments but more than 60 students interested in the program — and a shade structure for the school's playground.

The school doesn't have a strong Parent Teacher Organization, so teachers and staffers have to think of creative ways to raise money, Harrington said.

"We want very much to be able to provide, but it comes from teachers and (the) staff," Harrington said. "We just don't have the parental involvement to take on fundraisers."

Sarah Jessica Parker portrait

The Celebrity Doodle Auction is a major part of the school's fundraising efforts.

A self-portrait done by Sarah Jessica Parker, with an autographed photo, fetched a little more than $600 for the school in 2005.

Harrington said Parker has yet to come through with a photo or doodle this time around.

"We always get something from her," he said. "There's a ton that we always get, and we didn't get them."

Comedian Steve Martin and NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. had been regular contributors to the auction, but Harrington has had no response from them, either.

For past auctions, Earnhardt drew race cars with crayons.

Harrington mailed more than 600 letters to celebrities in April and received about 35 celebrity drawings or other doodles in the first month, but contributions halted over the summer.

He did have his suspicions about what caused the responses to stop.

In every letter, Harrington includes a note explaining the auction and three pieces of blank paper on which the celebrities can draw.

Also included in the envelope is a return postage-paid envelope.

Harrington included 80 cents' postage on each one, but postage went up a penny — to 42 cents — in May, and Harrington anticipated receiving postage-due notices on returning envelopes, which list Prince as both the sender and the addressee.

He didn't.

He also didn't receive any return-to-sender envelopes, which he said he commonly receives.

"It's not a case of where we don't get these back," he said regarding prior years. "We get them back."

Mail checked; nothing found

The school was closed during most of the summer, but Harrington regularly checked to see if any mail had been delivered to the school or to the Amphitheater Public Schools warehouse.

Worry began to set in when Harrington learned that unpaid postage-due notices are shipped to the Mail Recovery Center in St. Paul, Minn.

There, mail is sorted and scanned for currency, checks or other items of obvious value, and those are opened in an attempt to return the mail. Unreturned mail is auctioned off.

But a local post office official said nothing unusual happened to mail addressed to Prince this summer.

Rob Soler, a customer-relations coordinator with the U.S. Postal Service in Tucson, said his office checked on Prince's mail after Harrington sent a letter to the postmaster general.

"He was concerned some may have got sent to Mail Recovery," Soler said. "We checked that, and no mail was dispatched there for Prince or anybody else" on that route.

Records on Prince's route indicate only six postage-due notices for that route were issued from mid-May to the end of July, Soler said.

Four of those notices were paid by a customer, who wasn't with Prince School, Soler said.

Soler said he also spoke with the letter carriers who handle Prince's mail and mail delivered to Amphi's warehouse, but they were unaware of anything happening to Prince's mail.

Harrington said there's nothing more he can do, and he probably will never understand why responses stopped.

Harrington will hold an auction sometime during this school year, as he still has celebrity doodles he collected for the 2007 auction, which did not take place.

Current doodles include ones done by Al Pacino; "Ugly Betty" star America Ferrera, who wrote, "Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Taken"; and a drawing of the New York City skyline done by Donald Trump.

"If nothing happens, we will work with what we got," he said. "I will always do this, and I will do another mailing."