PEABODY – The Peabody Police Department is having a “Fill The Cruisers” event on Dec. 10 where the goal is to fill police cruisers with toys for their annual toy drive. From 10 a.m to 2 p.m., anyone can go to Higgins Middle School and donate an unwrapped toy.
The event is in addition to their usual toy drive which is based in the Peabody Police Department lobby. The toys are then distributed to schools in the area and given to families in need.
“We’re doing fill the cruisers with presents to go along with the way we have people drop them off at the station,” Eric Ricci, an officer in Peabody and an organizer of the toy drive said. “We’re just trying to add because we need to get more presents this year because of the hard times that families are having. So we want to make sure all the kids in the city that don’t have much, have some presents open under the trees.”
The toy drive through Peabody Police was started years ago by Commander of the Criminal Investigation Division, Scott Wlasuk. This is the first year “Fill The Cruisers” is part of the drive which has been brought to life by Ricci, Sergeant Tim Sullivan and Lieutenant Dave Bonfanti.
“They just kind of took the ball and ran with it,” Wlasuk said. “This past week and a half we’ve gotten a lot of positive responses on social media postings from a couple businesses and so I think it’s gonna turn out to be a great event so we’re really looking forward to it.”
The idea for the toy drive came to Wlasuk at the beginning of his career 30 years or so ago. When he was checking out at CVS one day, he saw a woman with her five kids unable to purchase treats for them.
“I wanted to offer to pay for it but I didn’t want to embarrass her so I didn’t and it was a couple of weeks for Christmas,” Wlasuk said.
After witnessing that, he expressed to a family friend how sad it made him to think how the kids might not have anything for Christmas.
“So she said to me, ‘well, why don’t we try to do something for them,’ so that kind of got the ball rolling,” Wlasuk said.
Between the two of them and the people they knew, they were able to give that family toys for christmas.
“We went up to the trailer park and surprised the kids and the mother was a little overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that we got her so it was just very rewarding knowing that we were able to help them out that Christmas,” Wlasuk said.
After that year, they wanted to keep doing something similar but wanted to stay quiet about it, so there was no official donation drop box or events like there are now. After working with one school for a few years, word got out to other elementary schools in the area so they expanded their efforts.
“The schools would handle getting names and clothing sizes, shoe sizes, any specific needs that a kid might have,” Wlasuk said. “And we ran it like that for several years and we got Toys R Us involved.”
When Toys R Us eventually closed, they had to start asking the community for donations. Now, the toy drive is well known throughout the area.
“It’s been one of the most rewarding parts of my career,” Wlasuk said. “I love this time of year being in a position where we’re out in the public, we know a lot of needy people out in the public. Obviously we have a lot of resources and contacts in the community and I’ve gotten that from my job and it’s one of the most rewarding things.”
