Big day at the bureau
By all measures, opening day at the Christmas Bureau exceeded expectations of the charity’s organizers.
Volunteers gave food vouchers worth more than $43,000 to nearly 1,400 families. Thanks to the toys distributed on Saturday, more than 2,800 children will have a brighter Christmas.
The number of families served on opening day is a record for the charity, which had 1,252 families come for help on Dec. 7 last year. Volunteer bureau director Carol Speltz said she was pleased so many could be helped.
“But the other side is that it is sad there are so many who need help,” she added. The average monthly income of the families served Saturday is $1,024.
The bureau, at the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center, gives food vouchers, toys, children’s books and a bag of candy to the area’s poor to help make their holidays a little merrier. Donations to the Christmas Fund pay for the vouchers and toys. The goal of the fund is $485,000.
People began lining up at the fairgrounds gate at 6 a.m. Saturday.
The first three women in line, wearing sleeping bags, coats and hats, carpooled from Spokane Valley. The trio said they came early in hopes of getting toys to play in the snow and radio-controlled cars for their children. They left the bureau nearly three hours later with battleships, cars and a Monopoly game.
“I wanted something we can have some family time doing,” said one of the women. “This forces us to be a family.”
Another early arrival brought her organic chemistry book to read while she waited. The woman has two children in high school and another in college, and is herself a senior at Eastern Washington University, hoping to go to medical school.
“Maybe someday I can come back here and help out others,” she said.
Speltz opened the doors to the bureau at 7:30 to allow as many people as possible to wait inside, out of the frigid morning temperatures. The first recipient began the process at 8 a.m. By midday, the line stretched from the Ag Building past the baseball park to Havana Street.
Rob McCann, the executive director of Catholic Charities, said the average time that recipients waited in line was still less than two hours. Catholic Charities and Volunteers of America jointly organize and operate the bureau. Many volunteers are new to the charity this year.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Leslie Morris, who volunteered with nine co-workers from the Coeur d’Alene Casino bingo department. “I thought we would be serving hungry people at a soup kitchen, but this is what we are doing. It’s a nice organization.”
Morris said the bingo workers have been together for years and they wanted to volunteer somewhere together. “We are like a family,” Morris said.
The unexpectedly large number of poor people kept volunteers busy all day restocking the toy room. When the first Clifford the Big Red Dog ride-on toy was unpacked, they discovered some assembly was required.
Three high school volunteers were enlisted to put the dogs together and apply decals. Christopher Garlock and Nicholas Johnson are members of the Knights service group at Gonzaga Prep, and Monica Farrell was volunteering with the National Honor Society from Lewis and Clark High School. They said the directions for assembling the dog were the most challenging part.
“I was in biology class and I can cut open a pig, but not put together a dog, although I guess it’s not really the same thing,” said Farrell.
At 2 p.m., McCann began handing out tickets to the people in line who would not make it into the building by closing time at 2:30. The tickets will allow them to return on any other day and bypass the line.
The bureau opens at 10 a.m. Monday and will be open daily, except Dec. 16, through Dec. 21.