Redding Police Officers are holding a toy drive as they ask the community to help support their “Operation Blue Santa”. Since 1991, the Redding Peace Officers Association and Redding Police Department has visited Redding families and children to provide gifts and other holiday cheer by the Blue Santa Team. The packages are delivered right before Christmas by the blue-clad Santa Clause with a trailer full of gifts, accompanied by other officers and volunteers. The team helps individual families and also visits the kids staying at One Safe Place and in the Mercy Hospital Pediatrics Ward. If they get enough donations, they also give candy-filled stockings and stuffed animals to almost any kid they happen to meet along the way. Saturday the 15th from 10AM to 3PM, officers will be collecting new unwrapped toys during a drive-through event at Redding City Hall. Monetary donations to the Operation Blue Santa Program can be made at reddingpeaceofficers.org.
-Steve Gibson