For the past 10 years, Rhonda Sanders has led a law enforcement initiative to provide bicycles for needy children each Christmas. Each year, the bicycle drive, funded primarily through the Community Benefit Committee’s annual Halloween Haunted House and private donations, has provided about 200 bicycles to kids each Christmas.
After another successful Haunted House event last week, the money to purchase those bikes is there. The bicycles are a different story.
“Huffy is our supplier and they emailed me about a month ago saying they would try to supply the bikes we need but couldn’t guarantee it this year because of the supply issues going on everywhere,” said Sanders, the co-founder of the Community Benefit Committee.
On Wednesday, Sanders was notified by email that Huffy could not provide the bikes, which the CBC purchases at wholesale costs.
Sanders said each year the CBC purchases about 150 bikes with another 50 or some coming from individual donations.
“This has left us scrambling to find another way to help these kids,” Sanders said. “That’s our mission and that’s what we are going to do.”
By Thursday, the CBC began putting together an alternate plan.
“We call it ‘Shop With A Cop,’” Sanders said.
Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office deputies and staff will accompany children selected for the program to Walmart or other retail outlets that sell toys and allow the children to pick out their own gifts.
“Right now, we’ll definitely be going to Walmart, but if there are other stores that sell toys we want to use them, too,” Sanders said. “To tell you the truth, we’re scrambling to get all this put together. There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle.”
Sanders said the CBC will work with local schools and their resource officers to select children for the program.
“For some of the older kids, we’re also thinking about setting up a computer bank where they can come in and order what they want from Amazon,” Sanders said.
Sheriff Eddie Hawkins said his department stands ready to participate in whatever plan is put together.
“We’ve always encouraged our people to be involved in this program and it’s always something our officers have enjoyed doing,” Hawkins said.
“They like working at the haunted house and doing whatever needs to be done to help these kids.”
Hawkins still holds out some hope that the bike giveaway may happen.
“We’re hearing there may be another supplier that can provide the bikes,” he said. “But even if that doesn’t happen, we’re going to participate in whatever we wind up doing. We’ll help any way we can.”
Sanders said this year’s Haunted House met its goal of raising $10,000.
The Haunted House was held four consecutive nights at the Columbus Fairgrounds, ending on Halloween.
“The first day was kind of slow and we did OK on Friday,” Sanders said. “On Saturday, it was great. We actually had to cut off entry. Sunday (Halloween) had a good turnout, too.”
Sanders said regardless of what kind of giveaway is put together, there will be new programs implemented as a part of the Christmas drive, including in-school programs to promote academic success and “personal need” scholarships for college-bound students to help them with costs not covered by financial aid or scholarships.
“This situation is making us make some adjustments to what we’ve done in the past,” Sanders said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re just going to throw our hands up. We’re determined to help children like we’ve alway done. It just may look a little different this year.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
