Mark Zuckerberg surprises Ohio family at mystery dinner
NEWTON FALLS, Ohio -- An Ohio family says they learned just 20 minutes before dinner this week that a planned mystery guest would be Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
The Vindicator of Youngstown reports Zuckerberg dined Friday evening with the Moore family in Newton Falls, about 55 miles southeast of Cleveland. The newspaper reports Zuckerberg had asked his staff to find Democrats who voted for President Donald Trump in November.
The family says not all the dinner chat was political. Daniel Moore says he and his wife, Lisa, talked about their work with an orphanage in Uganda and that Zuckerberg says he's now planning a fundraiser to benefit the orphans.
Zuckerberg announced on Facebook in January that he was challenging himself to visit people in all 50 states.
"I've spent significant time in many states already, so I'll need to travel to about 30 states this year to complete this challenge," he said in the statement. "After a tumultuous last year, my hope for this challenge is to get out and talk to more people about how they're living, working and thinking about the future."
Daniel Moore told CBS affiliate WKBN in Youngstown that Zuckerberg chose the area because of the political attention the Rust Belt received during the 2016 presidential election, due to Ohio being a swing state.
Earlier in the day, Zuckerberg spoke with Muslim students at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, WKBN reports. He said most of them were immigrants and told him about their experiences in violent war zones. Zuckerberg also stopped at the Ford Rouge Plant outside Detroit, even pitching in on the assembly line.
He then traveled to Eastern Gateway Community College in Youngstown to learn about their machining and welding programs and to meet with students.