GURNEE, Ill. (CBS) — A nonprofit organization and a school in a northern suburb are helping thousands of Chicago Public Schools students with their Christmas wish lists.
Students from Warren Township High School in the northern suburb of Gurnee stepped up to do their part Thursday and turned into Santa’s helpers to collect gifts for CPS students.
Amelia Serrano, 17, has helped with the Letters to Santa program for the past four years.
“I am someone who loves community service and being able to bring joy to these children during the holidays. Since I was little, my family was always the one at church picking up the presents from the angel tree,” she said.
Sandy Desiron is the head elf, who is also a math teacher and student council advisor. She said Warren Township High School has participated in the Direct Effect Charities’ Letters for Santa program for the past 24 years.
“I think it was a community service project for our National Honor Society, and they only took about two or three hundred gifts, and they handed them out. They wouldn’t follow them at all. They just trusted that people would turn them in,” she said.
They can now help fulfill more than 600 Christmas gift requests from CPS students. Direct Effect Charities is contacting donors to help answer the letters and purchase the gifts.
“Somehow I’ve done it for 25 years. I don’t know how,” says founder Michelle DiGiacomo. “Sometimes I think I’m a bit like Santa Claus. I don’t know, but I love it and it makes me happy.”
DiGiacomo said her original goal was to serve 5,000 students in Chicago schools. She surpassed that number and collected 5,700 gifts with help from others such as Warren Township students, but her new goal is to reach 6,000 gifts by Tuesday.
“You know, we always have to give it a little more than the year before, just in case,” she said.
Warren Township High School said they expect these gifts to be picked up Friday. Next Friday is the big day for Nixon Elementary School students, who will open Warren Township’s gifts.
