Mission possible: Facebook group fuels effort to bring Easter festivity to 362 Spokane kids’ front doors

When a group of volunteers sprang into action this week in hopes of delivering Easter festivities to families that had previously relied on community egg hunts, organizers thought they might reach around 100 kids.

“And that just kept growing and growing,” said Heather Savick, the lead organizer for the project dubbed Operation Egg Drop.

By Friday, Savick said she had collected enough plastic eggs and candy to bring a dozen eggs each to a total of 362 kids in 118 families.

The effort began last weekend, when three moderators of a local COVID-19-related Facebook group – called Helping Spokane County Get Through COVID-19 – were talking about the high level of need they’ve seen in the last month from families dealing with the pandemic.

Ileia Perry started the group March 12, the day before Gov. Jay Inslee ordered schools closed statewide. Savick, along with Shelly Zuber, is also a moderator.

“We could all see that (a school closure order) was coming, and I immediately thought of those kids and how they were going to be impacted,” Perry said. “And the parents who were going to have to stay home.

“I had people who could be helpers and I had people who were in need, so I thought I could link those people up.”

At first, Perry thought that would just mean sharing resources, spreading information and helping people gather supplies. Then came pointing people to government services and helping them apply for unemployment. Later, attorneys joined the group to help people navigate the court system, which has mostly been shut down.

“It’s become our own little community,” Perry said. “I didn’t expect that it would turn into all of these areas.”

On Day One, the group ended up with about 1,000 members. About a month later, on Saturday afternoon, the count was almost 11,000.

Now that more adults have settled into new routines and figured out what COVID-19 means for them, Perry said the focus of the group has shifted focus to helping kids and families regain normalcy in their lives.

That’s when one of the group’s moderators, in light of the upcoming Easter holiday, mentioned last weekend bringing some festivity to kids in the Spokane community, especially those whose traditions relied on church communities and other organizations.

“And (the idea) just snowballed from there,” Savick said.

Many people supplied empty eggs they had on hand, and others provided candy to fill them, Savick said. One donor gave organizers about 1,000 pre-filled eggs.

Savick also started collecting cash donations, chipping in $100 herself to get it started, and garnered an additional $470 through 10 donors. She said she made a number of trips to the store for candy and eggs, and her family filled around 2,500 eggs.

“It was beautiful to see how many people had this on their heart and donated in some way, even if it was $5,” Savick said. “It was a really neat thing to be a part of.”

The goal was to help kids in the Spokane area who were missing out on their local Easter egg hunt, but deliveries went as far as Hayden Lake when a single mother who had been laid off reached out.

“She had no idea how she was going to make Easter work for her kiddos,” said Savick, who is a social worker.

Savick and eight Operation Egg Drop volunteers, who Savick calls “bunnies,” made about half of the 118 deliveries to families on Friday – while wearing gloves and masks – and completed the rest on Saturday.

The operation also garnered enough support that donors decided to adopt several families for full Easter baskets, Savick said. One person’s donations for a family included a ham and grocery store gift card.

After the family received that donation, the mother reached out to Savick “in tears that this has been the hardest two weeks of her life,” Savick said.

Perry took her 5-year-old daughter with her Friday to deliver eggs in Hillyard, where Perry said she grew up in a low-income family herself.

“I could just see the relief on the parents’ faces,” Perry said. “You could see the joy. … That was a beautiful feeling.”

Jen Scheele – an in-home caregiver whose husband works in construction – said she cried when she received an egg delivery Friday for her two sons, who don’t know about it yet.

“It’s really hard figuring out how to pay the bills if only one of us is working,” said Scheele, whose family normally attends one of the local Easter egg hunts. “I feel blessed that they were able to help out.

“My oldest boy is pretty bummed out. This will be his first Easter without his cousins.”

Operation Egg Drop also found the family of Marina Madison, who had been living in a shelter with her seven kids since she was evicted in December. They were placed into new housing on Monday through Family Promise of Spokane after four months of living in shelters.

“Right now things are a little tough and not being able to celebrate Easter would be a big thing,” Madison said. “I know my kids will love it when they wake up Sunday morning.”

Next up, the organizers of Operation Egg Drop are looking to collect donations for gift baskets to deliver to high school seniors. Savick said she will post about how to contribute and nominate seniors in the Facebook group.

They “are experiencing so many losses,” Savick said.

“You grow up with this tradition that everyone else gets to experience and now that’s been ripped away from you,” Perry said.