By Charly SHELTON

The Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station and Crescenta Valley Park Annual Toy and Food Drive giveaway was held on Saturday at CV Park to help families in need. About 100 families and nearly 200 kids came down to the park for pictures with Santa, a hot breakfast and gifts of food and toys.

“It went really well with plenty of toys, plenty of food for everyone,” said Deputy Alex Covian, one of the event organizers. “Kids got to take their photographs with Santa. It went really well. It was a nice, quiet, orderly event.”

The drive, now in its 28th year, sources donations from the community through the now iconic gift-wrapped barrels that are left in grocery stores, libraries, schools and stores around the community from late November through the week before the event. The donations are then collected and sorted by sheriff’s department volunteers, and then given to those who need a little extra help this holiday season. And after all the work that goes into it, the real payoff for the volunteers is seeing the excitement of the children on giveaway day.

“For most of the kids, especially the younger kids, the reaction was running in there, having a good time, giggling and laughing and grabbing toys, and running around telling other people what toys they got,” Dep. Covian said. “There was one family in particular that showed up, [and they] had a little girl who had Down syndrome. And the family was telling me that they are unemployed and they don’t have a lot of money, and this was the only gift that the child is going to receive [for the holidays]. Their extended family is across the country on the East Coast, so they were pretty happy. They’ve been going through some hard times so the food and the toys were really good things for them.”

The event was an unqualified success and it helped to spread some holiday cheer.

“It was just a lot of fun watching the kids go through, watching families go to town with the toys,” Dep Covian said. “That’s always a great time for us.”

  Charly Shelton