By Jon Johnson
THATCHER – The place to be this Saturday, Nov. 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. will be the Five Below at 2157 W. U.S. Highway 70 in the Gila Valley Plaza to help Toys-for-Tots stuff their truck with new toys for children this holiday season.
And if you come between 10 a.m. and noon a Marine in his full dress blues will be there to assist.
Five Below is a store themed toward tweens and teens and offers a “super-fun shopping experience” with value deals in the $1 to $5 range of various products that “jump, fly, zoom, boom, bounce, float, taste, connect, and pop in eight different worlds: Tech, Style, Room, Play, Create, Party, Candy, and New & Now.”
After running the local Toys-for-Tots program for the past 18 years, Greg St. Hilaire has flown north for the winter back to his roots in Minnesota but has left his former partners in Christmas glee behind to run the show.
Fittingly, Marine wife Candice Aguirre-Tippey has stepped up to fill the organizer’s role.
“I really love this program,” Aguirre-Tippey said. “You never know when someone is struggling, so I think it’s a really good program to have out there for families.”
The only required documentation to sign up a child is a photo identification. For more information call Candice at (928) 432-1938 or email 2xtippey@gmail.com.
To sign up your child or children to receive gifts from the Toys for Tots program, visit either The Way at 555 Entertainment Ave., Safford Church of God at 901 S. Central Ave., the Graham County Health Department’s WIC office at 820 W. Main St., and in a couple of weeks at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church at 311 S. Central Ave.
In Greenlee County sign-ups are taking place in the town of Duncan and in Morenci at the Social Club, Arizona @ Work, and Holy Trinity Catholic Church.
The Toys for Tots program began in 1947 when Major Bill Hendricks’ wife, Diane, crafted a homemade Raggedy Ann-type doll and asked her husband to donate it to a worthy organization that would see it was presented to a needy child for Christmas. After not being able to locate such an agency, Diane suggested Bill start his own. That year, Hendricks and his Marine Reserve Unit collected and distributed roughly 5,000 toys to needy children in Los Angeles, and the Toys for Tots program was created. It has grown since then, and the program now gave away more than 18 million toys to more than 7 million children last year alone. Additionally, when the pandemic hit, the program distributed more than 2 million toys and books to children in need who were most affected by the virus.
The Toys for Tots program has given more than 18,000 gifts to more than 6,000 children in Graham County for the past four years, with each child receiving at least three gifts. The gifts are tailored to each child from a questionnaire parents or guardians fill out when they sign up a child. Coordinators are constantly hearing from parents that the toys they give are just what their children were hoping for.
With assistance from the local Pepsi plant and the use of a storage facility in Solomon, the local Toys-for-Tots has become a depot where they can receive large shipments of toys from the national organization and parcel out the pallets of toys to other coordinators throughout Arizona and New Mexico.
The Toys for Tots program is a top-rated charity with roughly 97 percent of monetary donations being used to provide toys, books, and other gifts to children with only about 3 percent used for administrative and fundraising costs.
Locally, 100 percent of all donations are used to provide toys to the children and the organization looks for toys year-round to get the best bang for the buck. Numerous businesses help out by allowing the roughly 100 toy drop-off boxes and 100 donation jars to be placed in their shops throughout Graham and Greenlee counties. So, drop a new, unwrapped tow in a donation box or drop a buck in a donation jar and know with confidence that it is going where intended.
This article has been corrected to show the accurate time of the event as being from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A previous version of this article stated an incorrect time.
