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Shop With A Cop brings Christmas cheer and big smiles to children
The annual Shop With A Cop program Saturday provided a Merry Christmas to 95 area youths whose Christmas probably would have been fairly bleak.
Volunteer chaperones met their charges early Saturday morning at the junior high school for breakfast, provided free by McDonald's, and a visit from Santa Claus. "It gives the kids and their chaperones a chance to bond," said Sgt. Rick Viola of the Mountain Home Police Department, who has been one of the organizers of the program for many years. "By the end of the breakfast you'll see a lot of chaperones getting hugs from the kids."
Then the children were taken by police cars and fire trucks to Wal-Mart for a shopping spree, using funds provided by donations from around the community raised by the staff at Pioneer Credit Union.
The names of the children selected for the program had been provided largely from school counselors. Each year there are more children eligible than can be served, so a simple screening process is used to identify those most in need.
The purpose of the program is to allow the children to buy presents for their family, "and we usually have to encourage them to buy something for themselves," Viola said.
Although the toy section got a good working over from the children, many of them used the gift cards they had been given to buy coats, scarves and hats for their family members. One little girl said she wanted to buy her daddy a watch because he'd always wanted one.
Approximately 200 volunteers, organized by Sgt. Jim Patterson of the Mountain Home Police Department, took part in helping the children during the shopping spree and related events during the day.
As the children began heading for the check-out lanes, some were a few dollars over their limit and many of the chaperones dug into their own pockets to make up the difference.
Then they took their gifts to special wrapping areas where Pioneer Credit Union and McDonald's employees helped the children wrap the presents, and the youngsters got a final chance to meet Santa again and tell him their Christmas wish lists.
The chaperones came from the Elmore County Sheriff's Department, the city and county COPS programs, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the BLM, Idaho State Police, the Mountain Home Volunteer Fire Department, and several squadrons on base, in particular the security forces and 726th Air Control squadrons.
In addition, the Owyhee County Sheriff's Office joined Saturday's event, bringing up children from their own Shop With A Cop program.