Mentalist to perform at Winter Gala

Tickets for Hillsboro’s Winter Community Gala, featuring mentalist Curtis Waltermire, will go on sale Monday at the chamber of commerce office.

Tickets to the Feb. 26 event, which includes dinner and a silent auction, cost $25 and may be ordered by calling (620) 947-3506.

Waltermire, who goes by the name Curtis the Mentalist, has been entertaining audiences professionally for nearly 30 years.

He can be seen currently on the PBS program “Street Rodding American Style” driving a restored Chevy Nova while blindfolded — a stunt he also performed in October with three-time Indianapolis 500 champion Bobby Unser.

“It was a lot of fun scaring Bobby Unser at only 40 miles an hour,” Waltermire said. “He just kept saying repeatedly, ‘This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!’”

Waltermire regularly performs mind-reading stunts on Wichita radio stations and entertains at clubs and for corporate and charity events.

“What I do isn’t psychic,” he said, “it’s psychological — some even call it ‘perceptual manipulation.’ I can’t talk to your dead relative, and I don’t hold the keys to the secrets of the Universe; I am simply an entertainer.”