You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch!
Published 8:50 pm Saturday, December 6, 2008
This is the season where our focus is supposed to be on giving. But some thought otherwise, judging by the theft of toys from the Toys for Tots warehouse early last Sunday morning.
About 70 brand-new, donated gifts were stolen from the Toys for Tots warehouse in Suffolk last weekend, said John Woleben, the Toys for Tots coordinator for Suffolk and Portsmouth.
The thieves took six bicycles, 20 MP3 players, 24 digital cameras, 20 men’s watch gift sets and a necklace gift set, Woleben said. He fears finding more toys missing when he re-inventories the warehouse.
The Suffolk News-Herald’s Cheer Fund is a big partner with Toys for Tots, raising more than $40,000 a year to ensure that the Toys for Tots campaign has enough money to buy toys for those less fortunate.
Already, the Cheer Fund and Toys for Tots were expecting a rough year for donations because of the state of the economy. What these two organizations didn’t need was for someone to take toys out of the warehouse. Those toys were ready to be delivered to children on Christmas Day.
Now it’s up to us to make sure those children get something. How can that happen? It’s easy. All you have to do is make a donation to the Suffolk News-Herald Cheer Fund. All the dollars donated to this fund stay in Suffolk and are considered tax-deductible donations.
“Unfortunately, these are gifts for older kids, and that’s where we have the biggest concern,” Woleben said. “We never seem to have enough gifts for older children, and that’s what they took.”
A spokesperson for the city of Suffolk attributed the theft to someone with the heart of the Grinch. But you have the chance to show just what Suffolk’s heart is really like. Please give generously.