Angela Carter, known as the Rose Girl, has been living up to her nickname by selling roses in local bars for over a decade.

Her fourth annual Rosegirl Comedy Show, featuring Bob Cheetah and Friends at the Eagles Club on May 7, will benefit the East Grand Forks Fire Department, Shriner Hospital and Options Resource Center.

Carter holds two comedy shows a year and gives the proceeds to communities from East Grand Forks to Bemidji, Minn.

“I do one for my birthday, which always benefits the Fire Department, Shriner Hospital and Options Resource Center, and then I do one in November for Wounded Warriors,” Carter said.

Carter said for her May comedy show, she sells nearly 400 roses and for her November show sells between 100 to 200.

However, these two fundraises aren’t the only fundraising and community work that Carter does.

In 2000, Carter began selling roses while working for Northern Lights Floral Co., and in 2003 she bought the company.

“When I was in beauty school, I was having a really hard time making ends meet, and my instructor found out about it,” she said. “So, she took it upon herself to take up a collection at her church, and I told her ‘I can’t take this,’ and she just told me to pay it back one day.”

Since then, Carter has been paying back the money to communities in North Dakota and Minnesota by selling her famous roses and donating 50 percent of the proceeds to charities and people in need. This is how she became known as the Rose Girl.

Carter says she travels from Devils Lake, N.D. to Bemidji to sell roses in bars. She usually makes it to 40 bars each night.

“It’s my job to drive around and visit people who are happy to see me when I get there,” Carter said.

Carter said since she first began fundraising, her number of charities and donations have increased into the hundreds, and other than her 11-year-old son Christian helping her out occasionally, she does it by herself.

“The greatest thing I ever got the chance to do was reunite a mother and daughter who had been separated for 30 years,” Carter said.

The daughter was kidnapped by her father when she was two, and was found when she was 30 in Puerto Rico. Carter raised money where she could fly the family to meet up in Minnesota.

“The biggest reason I do what I do is because I feel that it is my responsibility to do all the fundraising,” Carter said. “I’m a single parent without any family here, and I figured the ‘big guy’ has giving me some tools to use, and if I don’t use them the way he wants them used, then I will lose them.”

Misti Meads is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].