Community continues to help children, elderly

MAT-SU — If the Santa Cop program can be said to be one side of a coin, then the Special Santa program is the other.

Special Santa is much older than Santa Cop, with 13 years under its belt compared to Santa Cop’s six.

It’s also much bigger. Last year the program handed out toys to more than 2,000 needy children and this year’s tally of kids on the program’s rolls was, as of the middle of last week, more than 1,000 with many more sign-ups pending. Organizer Mari Jo Parks said she expects this year’s total to exceed last year’s.

And Special Santa has a different focus — children in need, rather than seniors.

But the two gift-giving programs work together. Though Santa Cop focuses on taking in gifts for the elderly, it also takes in toys and other items for children. Though Santa Cop volunteers deliver gifts to the elderly, they let Parks and her crew take care of distributing the toys.

Parks has been the head of Special Santa since it’s inception. She said the Santa Cop program has been very helpful through the years.

And so have many other groups.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts lend a hand. Elementary school classes take on families to sponsor. Palmer Junior Middle School is in the middle of a battery drive designed to make sure all the electronic toys handed out this year can have enough juice on Christmas morning.

Speaking Wednesday, Parks said she was just that afternoon going to go meet with a group from Matanuska Christian School that had done a fundraiser for the program. A different group of students recently went on a shopping trip with her to help pick out toys.

Wal-Mart and Target are helping out. Bishop’s Attic has been very generous. The Midnight Sun Riders, a Christian motorcycle club, helps coordinate the transportation of toys.

Doctors’ offices and dentists’ offices have been collecting toys for the program. When office staff calls patients to remind them of appointments, the staff also mentions the program, in case the patient wants to bring something by.

Really, Parks said, it’s a community effort in the most literal sense of that term. An accurate and complete list of people who’ve helped would take a very long time to compile.

“This community has wrapped their arms around this project,” Parks said. “Just when we think we’re not going to have enough, in walks another group who says, ‘Here’s more money, here’s more things.’”

Everyone with Special Santa — even Parks — is a volunteer. The program raises funds each year with Halloween Hallow on the state fairgrounds — an indoor trick-or-treating event. This year, she said, enough money was raised to keep her very busy when she went shopping on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

“We took a moving van and bought a moving van full of toys,” she said.

And what does Parks get out of it? The joy of watching it all come together.

“It’s magic. It is magic. Every year we have miracles. Right now sitting in front of me or working in front of me I have young mothers with their children sitting in front of them helping them,” she said. “And it’s fun. It’s just amazing.”

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