For children, public safety community
This holiday season was the first time out for a new program that pairs local public safety officers with children for a day of Christmas shopping.
Planning and fundraising for the county’s first Shop With a Hero program began less than three months ago, said Capt. Ray Grace, of the Ellijay Police Department.
“It really snowballed,” he added. “We came into this whole thing with a plan and got everybody who was going to be involved with, it on board from the beginning. That helped the final event go off with just a few minor hiccups.”
Grace said he’d wanted to help get a “Shop With a Cop”-type program started here for some time. When the idea was rolled out amongst Ellijay Police personnel and Renea Green, a GBI agent from Gilmer who’s previously participated in such events, Shop With a Hero quickly began taking shape.
“I don’t think we expected the (great) reaction we received. Everybody jumped on board with it,” said Grace. “We presented it to the (all the local public safety) department heads and between all our contacts, we were able to get the Gilmer Sheriff’s Office, Ellijay and East Ellijay Police Departments, both the Ellijay and Gilmer Fire Departments, Georgia State Patrol, the Department of Natural Resources and Department of Community Supervision involved.”
“We also had some public safety (employees) who don’t work in the county, but who live here and wanted to help,” Green added.
The Ellijay Police Foundation, a board-supervised 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works with the actual Ellijay Police Department, hosted the program.
“They were more than willing to let us do it. We wanted our own checking account for this program, so if anyone ran into a police officer and wanted to donate to Shop With a Hero, we could put those donations in an account that’s strictly for the kids. We then went to (Gilmer Charter Schools Superintendent) Dr. Shana Downs and said, ‘We want to do this program, but we need your help,’” said Grace.
“Since it’s our first year and we wanted to keep it manageable, our original goal was to do a (shopping program) for between 30 and 50 kids. We went to a lot of local business owners we know and explained what we were doing. In about four days, we’d already done enough fundraising to cover 50 kids.”
Strong first outing
A total of 52 children in third to fifth grades were selected to participate in the program by counselors and staff at Clear Creek, Mountain View and Ellijay Elementary School.
“We didn’t want to take away from any of the other programs (in the county), so we went to the counselors and said we want to help kids who have, maybe, fallen through the cracks,” Green explained. “Maybe it’s a kid who’s had an illness of some kind or a kid who’s recently lost a parent or their parent has lost a job. The counselors really hit it out of the park picking those kids.”
The children and their family members arrived at Elijay Elementary for an early breakfast Dec 14. Later, Christmas shopping was done at the East Ellijay Walmart, where children were paired with police and fire officers, as well as several spouses of the first responders, for shopping.
Grace said the Walmart staff was a huge help in making the first-time event come together.
“The manager, Tom Horton, definitely needs a shout out. So does Amber Davenport with United Community Bank (UCB), Dr. Downs and all the school counselors,” he added.
“The Junior Board of Executives at UCB also helped by coming out and serving the kids breakfast. They’re a group of high school students who have monthly board meetings and do projects and fundraisers. I went to them and said, ‘These little kids look up to the high schoolers. Would you be willing to come and serve breakfast?’”
Including children, family members and public safety personnel, the turnout totaled more than 200.
“We had a rough idea of how many public safety employees would show up, but not a (definite) total. That was our only stress point — who was going to show up,” Grace said.
“Mr. P’s donated breakfast for 220 people. The sheriff was able to have drinks donated and Ellijay Police Chief (Ed Lacey) found us a Santa Claus,” Green added. “The kids did some cookie decorating, then we then put them on a school bus and their parents went ahead to Walmart,” said Green. As soon as they got on the bus, which had a police escort, they realized what was going on, that it was all for them, she added.
Each child was able to spend $150. Such tasks as keeping track of spending, reaching high shelves and steering shopping carts were adhered to by the adult participants.
“All the money was locally sourced and went right back into the community. We gave them a gift card and they could spend $75 on clothes and the rest on whatever they wanted, things like toys or gifts for others,” said Grace. “(The purchases) were also 100 percent tax-free because it was run through the police foundation.”
Additional funds that were raised went to help students at Clear Creek Middle and Gilmer High School, noted Grace and Green.
“As it progressed, we ended up raising almost $13,000. We did this for the elementary schools and the fire departments do a (Christmas toy) program for pre-K through second grade, so we decided to pay off the balances for lunches at the middle school, which ended up being $1,463. The Shop With a Hero program wrote a check for that,” said Grace.
Walmart helped put together 486 bags of (nonperishable) food, for which people could donate money during the Shop with a Hero day. That food was then given to the high school’s student food pantry, Grace explained.
Twelve Christmas dinner baskets were also put together for the high school to send home with students, Green added.
‘A new tradition’
Grace said he hopes Shop With a Hero will become a new yearly tradition.
“The EPD Foundation partners with us for the National Night Out Against Crime and the safety zone during Halloween each year. This is by far the biggest project (to date) for the foundation and we want to keep it going for years to come,” he added.
Plans are already underway for the 2020 program, through which organizers want to reach even more families.
“It was a big family event for the public safety side of it and we got to meet not only a great group of kids, but also their families. It was good for us to have a positive impact on them, and for them to have a positive impact on us. That was pretty cool. It was an emotional day. It will bring a tear to your eye. That’s for sure,” Grace confided.
Green noted the crossdepartmental camaraderie that was essential to making the event a success.
“After one of our meetings, the comment was made that it’s amazing what you can accomplish when nobody cares about who gets the credit. That rang true because people from so many different departments came together for this and nobody cared about the credit. They just came together for these kids. It was both rewarding and heartbreaking at times, but in a good way,” she added.
Chief Lacey and his fellow officers agree that the program offers not only an opportunity to reach out to children in the community at Christmas, but it’s also a reminder of how important it is for those in the public safety field to have that type of positive interaction.
“You see on almost every job application for public safety where an officer answers the question, ‘Why do you want to be in law enforcement?’ with ‘I want to provide service to my community’ or ‘I want make my community a better place,’” he explained.
“Something like Shop With a Hero reminds us why we got into law enforcement in the first place. A lot of the time, public safety officers only experience the bad things. We see people in crisis and in bad situations. Something like this will stay with you for a long time.”