NOTO serves 300 Pahrump families with Toys for Tots — PHOTOS
Since 1947, Toys For Tots, the non-profit organization originally created by the Marine Corps Reserve, has distributed 708 million toys to 314 million economically disadvantaged children, according to their website. For the past 10-plus years, in Pahrump and Tonopah, the Nevada Outreach Training Organization (NOTO) has been responsible for handing out the toys collected to qualified families.
Interested parents and grandparents started signing up in early November, explains Darlene Hatfield at NOTO, “We start posting right around November 1st, ‘hey, sign-ups are starting’. So we take sign-ups from people for a month and a half before we ever host the actual toy handout.” This year, NOTO had over 300 families that signed up and picked up toys for their kids or grandkids this past Wednesday and Thursday at NOTO’s location at 621 S. Blagg Rd.
Parents and grandparents that enrolled, began lining up at NOTO’s offices early on Wednesday. Grandmother Holly Hinson arrived at 4:45 a.m. “I thought I’d be way too early, and there was like 12 people ahead of me,” she explained. Hot chocolate, cookies and candy canes, provided by Valley Electric, were available at 6 a.m. for those waiting in line, and served by volunteers.
At 8:30 a.m., each person was registered, signed in and was escorted by a volunteer, or “elf”, into a large room that contained thousands of toys, divided by children’s age group (i.e. ages 7-12, etc.). As enrollees finished filling kitchen trash bags with toys, they were also allowed to select one new blanket, one new pair of shoes, a new jacket and as many kids’ books as they wanted. The “elves” helped carry their bounty of merchandise to their vehicle.
Gustinna Proctor and Joaquan Cox were in line, waiting to get gifts for their three children, ages 4, 14 and 15. They recently moved to Pahrump three months ago from Southern California. When asked how they like their new hometown, Cox replied, “It’s like, slower, nicer. Everybody, like, help each other. I’ve been meeting a lot of nice people.”
Viridiana Valdes, who selected gifts for her six children, has attended the Pahrump Toys for Tots program for the past three years. When asked what the program means to her, Valdes said, “It means a lot. It means everything, you know, like it helps me a lot with everything, especially right now. There’s a hard situation, you know, so it means a lot for me and my family.”
“I want to say we had 325 families last year,” says Hatfield, who mentioned that translates to over 1,200 kids receiving gifts last year. She adds,”I won’t actually have that total number [for this year] until basically December 24th …because a lot of people don’t sign up.”
John Clausen is a freelance reporter living in Pahrump.
