Sheriff holds food, school supply drives
Published 9:49 pm Tuesday, August 25, 2015
The Suffolk Sheriff’s Office has a slew of community outreach activities coming up, including a school supply drive set for Sept. 2.
“This is the first time we’ve done it,” Maj. E.C. Harris said of the school supply drive.
Sheriff’s deputies will be at Walmart, 1200 N. Main St., from 1 to 4 p.m. to collect donated supplies. The supplies will be given to Elephant’s Fork Elementary School, Harris said.
Most-needed supplies include pencils, crayons, glue sticks, colored pencils, notebooks, construction paper and looseleaf paper.
Harris said next year’s school supply drive will be toward the beginning of the month to coincide with tax-free shopping days on school supplies.
On Sept. 4, sheriff’s deputies will collect food, hand out gun locks and prepare child identifications for use in an emergency at Kroger Marketplace at 1017 University Blvd., from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“We had a big-time success with the amount of food that was donated,” Harris said of the last food drive. “I bet you we had five shopping carts slam full of food.”
The food will be donated to Faith Temple Apostolic’s new food pantry, Harris said.
The gun locks will be handed out courtesy of Project Child Safe, which sends them to the sheriff’s office for free.
“Our goal is to put a gun lock in every gun owner’s hands in the city,” Harris said. “Kids are curious.”
Gun locks, free water and public safety information also will be distributed by the sheriff’s deputies at Taste of Suffolk, set for Sept. 12 in downtown.
For more information on any of the upcoming activities, call 514-7840.