LYNN — It’s only six months into the year and Dominic Gatto; his daughter, Ariana Gatto; and his fiancé, Samantha Carey, have already collected more than 400 toys for their annual holiday toy drive. They have so many toys, they had to rent a storage unit to hold all of them.
They started collecting for their 2023 toy drive right after last year’s Christmas, Gatto said. This is thanks to the fact that Walgreens put an 80% clearance on its toy section.
“My goal was to wait until the summer to try to start it up then, but at that time the opportunity was there and I wasn’t going to just hope that something like that was presented again,” Gatto said.
One goal they have this year is to donate 50 bikes, but so far they have only collected four.
“But it’s still early, so we’re not really sweating it,” Gatto said.
The Gatto Family Toy Drive (GFTD) began last year, after they had originally wanted to sponsor a family for the holidays.
“Some of the organizations we reached out to… they wanted like $700 a family, and we thought that was kind of ridiculous,” Gatto said. “I mean $700 is a lot of money, right? So we figured we’d take that money and go out and buy toys and donate them.”
They would go and find discounted name-brand toys from stores like Walmart and Target, he said.
“That original $700 that we wanted to donate to one family bought enough toys to help many families,” Gatto said.
By reaching out to community members and friends, they were able to grow it even more, he said.
“A lot of them were really open and willing to donate,” Gatto said.
The toys are donated to the Gavin Foundation and the South Church Children’s Closet. They are looking to expand to more places this year, he said, including hopefully the new Recovery Exchange center that opened in the city recently.
“I’m in recovery myself so that’s a big thing for me, trying to help families in recovery because at the end of the day, it’s not our children’s fault, they still deserve to be able to have Christmas and live a good life,” Gatto said.
For Gatto, the toy-donation project is a family thing.
“My daughter’s really into it. She’s six years old, but she absolutely loves the idea of donating, she’s always running up to me with her toys and she’s like, ‘Dad, can we donate these?’” Gatto said.
He said the original goal was just for them to donate some toys.
“It blossomed into so much more. Last year, we had bikes donated from businesses, local politicians, family, friends, just people online that saw my posts that wanted to help,” Gatto said.
GFTD accepts any unopened toys, as well as financial donations.
“The more people that give back, the more families we can help,” Gatto said.
Those looking to donate can contact GFTD at [email protected].
