Cabell County EMS holds first-ever Christmas toy drive for Salvation Army

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) - Boxes full of toys are getting packed up, and sent off to the Salvation Army for Christmas time -- all donated by Cabell County EMS employees for their first-ever Christmas toy drive.

“It’s the Christmas spirit. It’s time to reach out and to help the needy,” said Cabell County EMS administrative secretary Nancy Lucas. “That’s what we’re here for, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. As a community, as human beings, we need to reach out and help, and we didn’t want a child to go without a toy this Christmas.”

More than 1,200 kids have been signed up for the Angel Tree Program across Cabell, Mason, Lincoln and Wayne counties.

“Just here in Cabell County, we probably have around 220 kids that have not been adopted off of our Angel Tree,” said Capt. Liz Blusiewicz with Salvation Army. “They’re forgotten angels, and these toys because of the graciousness of our EMS folks there’s going to be no forgotten kids this Christmas.”

With that many kids, Cabell County EMS knew they needed to raise the stakes by creating a competition between all the crews in the county.

“Whoever wins will get a pizza party,” Lucas said. “We just wanted to motivate our crews that they could do this.”

The motivation worked. Crews came through with boxes of toys.

“When I walked in and I saw this, I thought, thank God there’s people in our community that take care of their neighbors because these are kids that play on our street, these are kids that we know,” Blusiewicz said. “To know that there’s love and people in the world that still care, that makes it all worth it.”

“It’s overwhelming to think we helped a little bit to help them do this,” Lucas said.

If you’d like to help, you can donate toys to any Cabell County EMS office until Friday.

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