Alaska’s First Lady honors ‘Santa Cop’ founder

PALMER — It’s not every day a patrol cop gets a call from the governor’s wife.

But the Palmer Police Department’s Donna Anthony got just such a call recently. She was in her police car when dispatchers put Sandy Parnell through to her cellphone.

“I thought dispatch was playing a prank on me,” Anthony said.

So why the phone call?

Anthony was selected to receive one of the First Lady’s Volunteer of the Year Awards. The honor puts her in rare company — five others were selected this year from communities as varied as Old Harbor, Ketchikan, Anchorage and Girdwood.

If you don’t know Anthony, you’re probably not a senior citizen who spends Christmas alone. It was Anthony who created the Santa Cop program that brings yuletide gifts and hot meals to seniors who don’t have families to visit. Since its inception, Santa Cop has grown so much it had to change the name.

The organization is now Santa Cop and Heroes, reflecting deep involvement of the Valley’s firefighters and medics.

Meals and gifts are delivered all over the Mat-Su Borough, from Sutton to Palmer to Talkeetna. The Anchorage Police Department is even joining the effort.

It takes a lot of hard work from a whole lot of people to put together an operation like that. Anthony says she’s just a person who had a good idea.

“Thanks to the chief letting me go with my idea, it’s just grown,” Anthony said, referring to her boss, Palmer Police Chief George R. Boatright.

The program has also grown to include days other than Christmas. Santa Cop has started plowing driveways, helping seniors pay utility bills and even helping seniors move out of homes that have become uninhabitable. Plowing was kind of a big deal this year with heavy snowfall sometimes hampering Meals On Wheels deliveries.

“Donna’s desire to make sure no one falls through the cracks has a tremendous effect on seniors and her community at large,” Anthony’s Volunteer of the Year Award citation reads.

Though she’s the one heading to Juneau next month for a fancy dinner and award ceremony — which, she joked, as a Valley resident she might be tempted to attend in Carhartts — Anthony said she didn’t win the award alone.

“The (Santa Cop) committee girls and all the officers that participate is what makes it happen,” she said.

And while the cops and heroes who participate are no strangers to saving lives, they’ve saved a few more making the Christmas rounds. There was the year an officer arrived to find a senior living in a freezing cold home. Santa Cop volunteers got in touch with her landlord.

Multiple officers have arrived to find a senior who’d needed medical attention. Anthony personally helped a woman just up the street from the police station in that situation.

“She’s just the nicest lady,” Anthony said. “When she fell, she wouldn’t let me leave her until the medics got her.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.