Bureau closes doors for season
The Christmas Bureau closed its doors for the season at 2:30 yesterday afternoon after giving more than 31,000 people the fixings for a brighter Christmas. More than 750 families came to the bureau on the last day to get vouchers for a holiday dinner and toys for their children.
Kathy Ostboe, 26, was the last recipient through the line. She arrived, out of breath after running from the parking lot, two minutes before the doors were closed for good. She had just gotten off work, at a motel in Spokane Valley, and remembered to dash home and get her husband’s identification. The amount of the food voucher depends on the number of people in the household. With three children, her family got a $40 voucher.
“That will be used tonight on my way home,” she said.
Since the charity was closing and anything left over must be stored for the year, she was given extra coloring books for the children, two boys ages 7 and 5 and a 9-month-old girl. “My 7-year-old loves to read but the 5-year-old likes anything that moves,” she said.
Only a few toys remained on the tables in the toy room, but Ostboe didn’t mind. She picked up a top with a circling train and a Star Cops wand for the boys, and a Chuffa Puffa pull-along locomotive for her daughter.
“Last year I didn’t have a Christmas tree so I put some lights on a houseplant,” Ostboe said. “This year I got a little tree. It’s not real and it’s not really pretty but it’s a tree,” she said.
Even as Ostboe picked out her toys, teachers from the Alpha Delta Kappa service sorority packed extra children’s books into boxes, and students from Gonzaga Prep and Shadle Park High School loaded dozens of folding tables and chairs into trucks.
The toys that were left over were inventoried and stacked, ready for transport to storage spaces. There weren’t many extra toys – a few boxes of toboggans, which stayed on the shelves as soon the snow melted, infant toys such as water playmats, boxes of paint-by-number Santas and several dozen Barbies with Ford Mustangs.
Within two hours of closing, the Christmas Bureau was gone – tables, chairs, coffeemakers, computers and toys on the way to storage. Volunteers headed home to finish preparing for their own holiday celebrations.