Every day at 4 p.m., residents of Larrabee Village know where to find Arline Goodwin – in her apartment watching “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” But now, she has more to look for than her favorite celebrities. She’s hoping to see herself.

Goodwin is one of about 20 Larrabee Village residents who star in a video that’s already gotten more than 400 hits on the online site YouTube and that they hope will land in the hands of DeGeneres. Since the minibus that takes the elderly and disabled residents to activities around town broke down this winter, they’ve been trying to raise money in order to buy a new one. And they’re hoping DeGeneres can help.

Click below to see the video!

For many Larrabee Village residents, the bus was their only form of transportation. In addition to taking them on runs to the bank and the grocery store, the bus brought the residents to plays and on foliage tours – activities they looked forward to and hope to be able to do again soon.

“What do we do for excitement? Twiddle our thumbs,” said resident Joanne Leavitt about life after the bus broke down.

Through advertising sales and registration fees for a golf tournament this fall, the staff of Westbrook Housing, which runs Larrabee Village, hopes to raise the money to buy a new bus, but having DeGeneres on board, too, couldn’t hurt, they said.

“A lot of our residents watch her and think she’s a riot,” said Nicole Nappi, activities coordinator for Westbrook Housing. “We knew it was sort of a long shot, but we thought we’d try.”

Nappi said a new handicap-accessible bus would cost around $65,000. The old bus, which they purchased used with money from the fundriaser three or four years ago, has continued to break down despite thousands of dollars of repairs made, she said.

Nappi and Todd West, executive assistant at Westbrook Housing, filmed the residents earlier this month, lined up with their walkers and oxygen tanks, trying to push the broken-down bus. They hope their humor and their cause strikes a chord with DeGeneres, whom they sent the video to last week. Ideally, they’d like to get her to come to the tournament in September, but any sort of recognition from her will do, they said.

West and Nappi got the idea to send a video to DeGeneres last month during a planning meeting for the fundraiser, which is being held for the fourth year to raise money for residents of Larrabee Village. Originally, they thought of trying to get a sports figure to come play in the golf tournament.

“It came up as a joke,” West said about trying to get DeGeneres to come instead. But as they kept talking about it, it started to seem like a better and better idea. Nappi thought it would be funny to have the elderly and disabled residents trying to push the bus, but she didn’t know how it would sit with them.

“I thought, ‘Will they be willing to do this and make fun of themselves?'” Nappi said, but when she mentioned the idea, they immediately got excited. From there, Nappi said, it all happened very quickly. They were still trying to find a camera to use the morning they decided to shoot the video.

According to the residents, between tying scooters with rope to the front of the bus and having to redo takes because of lawn mowers and trucks getting in the way, the shoot was better than the video.

“That was hilarious,” said Joanne Levitt.

West, who has experience editing video, put the final piece together. He said he tried to keep it short and sweet and not too professional looking. For the most part, the residents were pleased with the end result.

“I think for a bunch of amateurs, we did pretty good,” Leavitt said.

Goodwin, however, thought one thing was lacking.

“We didn’t do enough dancing,” she said. “That’s her big thing. If you’re dancing, you’ve got Ellen’s attention right away.”

But, West said, he thinks there are other aspects of the video that will catch DeGeneres’ eye.

“The more I see the video ,I’m still picking up on things,” he said, like resident Polly Hodgkins using her walker to push the bus.

Though residents and staff will continue watching the video and sending the link to their friends and family with the hope that it will generate a buzz, for now, it’s a waiting game to see if they hear from DeGeneres herself.

If too much time goes by, West said, he’ll dub over the audio, replacing “Ellen” with “Oprah.” And that doesn’t bother resident Charlie Kendall.

“Ellen, Oprah, who cares? Just send us money,” he said.

Meanwhile, Goodwin is ready to get started on their next project.

“We’ve gotta do another video,” she said. “We need a gym.”