As a student at McCaskey High School, Emily Vargas played field hockey, basketball and softball and ran track and cross country.

She tried tennis, she said, but she didn't like it.

"That's about it," Vargas said after listing the sports.

Now, at age 30, she is a full-time student finishing an associate degree in medical billing. She also works full time as a hotel housekeeper and laundress and is a mom, raising three daughters as well as volunteering at their school.

"I'm very active," Vargas said.

And she likes it that way.

So, when the opportunity arose to help organize the first block party in her neighborhood in nearly five years, she was ready.

"When this block party is over" she hopes people will "keep talking about it for weeks," she said.

Vargas is coordinating the South Ann Concerned Neighbors' United Neighbors event, which will be held from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday in the 200 block of South Ann Street in Lancaster city.

The block party promises to be the largest ever held by the neighborhood association. Plans call for live entertainment on a midblock stage, food vendors, games, a raffle, a yard sale, a dunk tank, a cake walk and a back-to-school rally. Radio station WLCH 91.3 FM will broadcast live during the event.

Vargas expects the party to draw residents from all six blocks of South Ann Street and the surrounding area, comprising 15 blocks of the city's southeast quadrant.

To ensure that it does, she and fellow members of her five-member planning committee went knocking on doors. Then they went back again at different times because residents work different shifts, committee members said.

Not only were they spreading the word, they were seeking financial support. They asked for $5 from each household to help pay for game prizes and other expenses.

"If they didn't have it, it's not a big deal," committee member Kalliza Toro said. Other committee members are Priscilla Glover, Jose Rivera and South Ann Concerned Neighbors president Darlene Byrd.

They also sent letters to and visited businesses. They asked for donations of money and goods to support the activities and provide items for the raffle.

Of all the activities at the block party, the raffle is particularly important to committee members — and the neighborhood's children — they believe.

Proceeds from the raffle will go toward renovation of a ground-floor space at 259 S. Ann St. Plans call for the association-owned building to become an Internet cafe where neighborhood children could use computers and get help with schoolwork.

The renovation likely will cost about $100,000, but the few thousand dollars they hope to receive from the raffle will allow the association members to show community support when they seek foundation grants and donations.

"I love kids," Vargas said of her involvement with the event.

She sees it as an extension of her volunteer work at her children's schools.

She wants to see the computer lab, in a former appliance repair shop, become a reality.

"It will keep them off the street. It will keep them occupied," Vargas said.

She and the other organizers want to see continual revitalization of the neighborhood. They remember what it was like at times in the past, and they don't want to return to those days.

Vargas, who has lived her life in the Garden Court Apartments in the 100 block of South Ann Street, remembers the early 1990s when gang members dealt drugs and fought for territory.

It was then that South Ann Concerned Neighbors was formed. The first block party was held in 1990. The parties were started to introduce neighbors to each other and to help mend the fabric of the community.

They were held annually through 2005, when there was less interest and less activism in the thriving neighborhood, said Byrd, the longtime association president.

"Not all blocks are like this. There are blocks where you can live and never end up meeting your neighbors," Vargas said.

bharris@lnpnews.com