Drinks for a Claus will help Crawford County children, families

0

BUCYRUS — Dawn and Casey Pollock formed Debbie’s Footsteps seven years ago after Dawn’s mother, Debbie Skaggs, was diagnosed with the devastating disease. The organization is designed to raise awareness about the disease that is estimated to affect as many as 5.1 million Americans and to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Foundation.

Casey said he and his wife love helping others and have organized a different type of event to help children and their families this holiday season.

“We have been blessed with a wonderful group of people surrounding us, our volunteers, our donors, the folks that we work with at the Alzheimer’s Association and all of the participants for our event. This year we were discussing the fact that we do a great event in the heat of the summer each year, but we don’t really do anything during the winter months,” said Casey.

Casey said a toy drive came to mind immediately.

“From there it just seemed to “snowball.” We reached out to the band, the Red Ball Jets, and they talked among themselves and decided that they were all willing to help us out with this project,” Casey said.

Casey said from that point, he talked to Shawn and Tascha Ridgeway from Dillinger’s Entertainment Center and Restaurant.

“Shawn and Tascha said that they were “all in” and that they wanted to help in anyway that they could. After several texts back and forth, “Drinks for a Claus” was born,” Casey said.

Casey said others pitched in to help.

“Dan Price from A-1 Printing agreed to help us out. He designed our flyer for us and printed them to distribute throughout the area. Custom Glass Solutions by Guardian in Upper Sandusky has donated three frozen Turkeys to help out with a Christmas feast for the food drive,” said Casey.

Drinks for a Claus Holiday Party and Toy Drive will be held from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Dec. 10 at Dillinger’s, which is located at 144 Washington Square in Bucyrus. The cover charge requires people to bring one new, unused toy and one canned food item.

“We would like to bring the community together to help feed people who are struggling during this time of the year. We want a child that would have woken up on Christmas day with nothing to open to have a toy or a few toys to open and be able to enjoy Christmas,” Casey said. “Everyone in our group has wonderful memories of Christmas mornings as children and we want the ability to hopefully give children the chance to have similar memories.”

Casey, Dawn and the many volunteers helping with the event also want to be able to provide meals to local families who are in need.

“We want to be able to give a meal or the ingredients to make a meal to people that are less fortunate right now or that have fallen on hard times,” said Casey.

Casey said Debbie’s Footsteps is working with other agencies to ensure that families in need benefit from the donations.

“We will be donating all of the toys to the Crawford County Children’s Services to be distributed to families that are in need throughout the county. The food donations will be given to Good Hope Lutheran Church’s WOW program,” Casey said. “We are doing this event because it is the right thing to do to support and help out our community.”

Toy donations are being accepted at Dillinger’s from now until Dec. 10. For more information about Debbie’s Footsteps, visit https://www.facebook.com/debbiesfootsteps.

By Kimberly Gasuras

[email protected]

Reach Gasuras on Twitter: @kimberlygasuras

No posts to display