The holidays are an emotional rollercoaster for all families. There’s pressure on parents to outdo themselves every year, and there’s pressure on children to find the love and attention they’re craving. The holidays can be the best of times, and for some families—the worst. Christmas trees, presents, and cheery decorations don’t make their way into every home.
One community that’s been doing its utmost to balance that out for eight years running is Silver Bay, smack dab in the middle of the North Shore.
There, the police and fire departments, along with hundreds of individuals and business donors, have taken the initiative to turn Christmas into the miracle it should be for families. They’ve developed the Shop with a Hero program—a charity event with a big heart.
One Saturday morning in December, police cars and fire trucks come to pick children up at their homes, take them out to a hearty breakfast compliments of Northwoods Family Grille (Northwoods steak and eggs, anybody?), and then treat them to a mini shopping spree at Julie’s True Value. The children get to buy gifts for their whole family, and the cops and firemen wrap the gifts and deliver them to the kids’ homes. Here’s how this tight-knit North Shore community comes together to make Shop with a Hero work.
Faron Meeks, co-owner of Julie’s True Value hardware store together with his wife Angela, has been part of Shop with a Hero from day one. Meeks, who grew up in Finland, and has been a volunteer firefighter in Silver Bay for 23 years running, calls the program “well-funded” by generous community members.
Meeks supports the program through his own business, putting out a fireman’s boot at the cash register all year round. “We probably raise $600 dollars just in that boot,” recounts Meeks.
But he’s not the only one. “The community has really taken off with it. We have businesses who call us and say, ‘Hey, I haven’t gotten my letter yet,’” laughs Meeks, referring to the donation requests that he and his team of volunteers send out to raise money for the kids. These donations go a long way to make kids’ Christmas dreams a reality.
Does Shop with a Hero have a budget? “Not really,” Meeks says. “It’s hard to say ‘no’ when you’re giving back to the community. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s very well appreciated, and very well supported.”
So how do kids get chosen for the program? Meeks and his team tap into the William Kelley School, a grades K-12 regional school that serves Isabella, Finland, Little Marais, Beaver Bay, and Silver Bay. There, teachers and administrators are resources for referring families to the program. “We don’t care if we have to drive all the way to Isabella to get a kid to bring him or her to Shop with a Hero. We’re going to do it if we see the need for it,” explains Meeks.
The school provides a list of families that have applied for the program. “We’ll just look at this list, and if there are eight of them on there that we think are a good fit for the program, we’ll try to take all eight. Some years we’ve had up to seven or eight families, sometimes we’ve had four families. We really don’t have a limit,” Meeks says.
Well, except for the number of squad cars available. “Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to do 20 kids—we wouldn’t have enough cop cars and firetrucks to pick them all up.”
Once families are selected, one child from each is chosen to shop for all the siblings and parents. “Usually, we try to get the oldest kid,” says Meeks, “who knows what’s going on—what the family’s needs are.” The program encourages the selected kids to come in with their parents, or whoever’s involved, to pre-shop and find items which are the best fit.
On the day of, the children get a ride in the squad car and a free breakfast, and then “a pretty big chunk of money” to use at Julie’s True Value. “Sometimes it will be $50 to $100 per person in the family,” says Meeks.
So how do you wrap so many gifts? A lot of people come in to help. “After the kids finish shopping, we bring them back to Northwoods Grille, and we have a big table set up there. Between the firefighters and their families, and people who just show up to help, we wrap all their gifts together with the kids.” Then the police and firemen drive the kids home with their Christmas bounty, and help carry all the boxes inside.
Word of mouth has spread through the close-knit first responder family, according to Meeks. “This started with the Silver Bay Fire Department and the Silver Bay Police Department, but we have Lake County Sheriff’s Department deputies who come, and we’ve had state troopers.” That’s a lot of heroes.
Besides the individual gifts that the children select, families also get a tote of household items compliments of Julie’s True Value. It’s “everyday essential needs stuff, like toilet paper, paper towels, envelopes, and notebooks, pens and pencils for the kids,” says Meeks, who’s “in a pickle” as the Assistant Fire Chief, but also owner of the business that provides the shopping. “My wife and I didn’t want to make any profit. We wanted to give back. So, what we did was donate the profit that we make off of Shop with a Hero back to the families, through the essentials totes.”
This spirit of giving that permeates the Silver Bay community is a way of showing love to families that deserve it. Thanks to these heroes, the Christmas rollercoaster is more about ups than downs.
