Upon viewing the recent parade of dozens of law enforcement vehicles — with a couple of school buses packed with kids staged in the middle — a downtown merchant posted online, “Gilmer County Shop with a Hero came by the bakery this morning. We love this town!”
The sixth annual Shop with a Hero, sponsored by the Ellijay Police Foundation, toured both local townships in a processional with lights flashing and sirens wailing before the shopping began, reported assistant police chief Ray Grace.
“We bring the kids into the school on Saturday morning and feed them breakfast,” Grace said of the big event two weekends ago. “They get to decorate cookies and read a story with Santa Claus, sing Christmas carols, just all kinds of fun things. Then we put them on two school buses right in the middle of the escort — or parade, whatever you want to call it — and we take them through Ellijay, East Ellijay and down to Walmart where all the associates meet us outside and greet the kids. Then we pair them up with a hero — a firefighter, police officer, FBI (agent), Army (soldier), some schoolteachers, even the district attorney and deputy coroner.”
With help from participating adults, the kids are are given a $175 gift card with a requirement that $75 of the amount must be spent on clothes.
“Then the other $100 they can spend on toys or whatever they want up to the limit,” Grace added. “We let the parents say yes or no on something like Nerf guns … we do let them buy stuff for a sibling, and some kids want to buy something for their parents.”
The gift cards are purchased by local business owners and individuals, and donated to the police foundation for distribution. Renea Green, assistant special agent-in-charge with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), noted how the local program works that is loosely based on “Shop with a Cop” programs around the country.
Lots of contributors
“We work with the schools, and they will nominate 25 children, third through fifth grade, from each elementary school,” said Green. “We typically have about 75 kids that are nominated for a multitude of different reasons. The biggest thing is this is meant to be a supplemental program, not a program that would take away from anything else the community does — like the firefighters doing a kids’ Christmas for pre-K through second grade.”
Middle school students and high schoolers are not left out.
“The middle-school counselors nominate 10 children and get a wish list,” she continued. “Most of them want Nike and Under Armour and stuff like that. So we’ll get a group of friends that will go down to Canton or Woodstock and we’ll shop for them, wrap those presents, take them to the middle school and let them disseminate those.”
At Gilmer High, the School Governance Council jumps in to help, as well as United Community Bank (of North Georgia) junior board members. Both groups work to help get bags of food packed for sale at Walmart, visible when shoppers come through the entrance.
“We also let the high school nominate about 20 families that Grace and I will go shopping for and get Christmas dinner items for them,” said Green. “For the last few years, we’ve worked very, very closely with Walmart, and I cannot sing their praises enough because they do so much for this program. We do a food pantry drive and packed 800 bags of food, and those are sold at Walmart (at the store entrance) for about $7 a bag, then they put them in a bin and we’ll deliver them to the high school.”
Other contributors pitch in as well.
“The men’s group with Cartecay Baptist Church filled 75 to 80 backpacks that the children got that day,” Green noted. “And we recently got with Robert Ferguson up at the high school, who runs their audio/video program, and so we were able to meet with them prior to (the event) and interview a couple of heroes. You can look at our Gilmer County Shop with a Hero Facebook page and see all of that … I think Robert did some drone footage that we’ll be able to have access to.”
Program is ‘impactful’
There are some “cool” aspects to the endeavor, according to the two law enforcement veterans.
‘We really kinda hit every age in the school system, and we thought that the third- through fifth-graders was such a good age to make an impact and give the students a good interaction with our first responders,” explained Green. “One of the coolest things about this program is trying to get more community involvement, and especially with our students in the hopes that it’s impactful for them and instills in them a passion to give back to their community.”
“I think the escort is pretty cool, it’s about a mile long or a little longer. Since this is our sixth year, people ask me, ‘When is Shop with a Hero?’ and ‘When is the parade?’” Grace said with a laugh. “People will come out just to watch the parade!”