Ace Taxi’s Fleet Manager, Tim Cole, has a
secret! It’s not that kind of secret that would get you on Santa’s
naughty list! No, it’s not that kind of secret at all. In fact Tim might
get some points from Ole’ Kris Kringle when he finds this out. Tim
volunteers at several charities all year round, but this one is special,
especially for this time of year. Tim volunteers at the Wadsworth, OH
Salvation Army during their Annual Christmas Food Drive. Every year Tim
takes a vacation day from work to help this cause. After dropping his
son off at school, he heads home to put on his Santa suit and then off
to the Salvation Army, where the line of needy families is already
starting
to form.
Tim helps the other volunteers do the final
preparations and finishing touches on the 399 baskets that serve family
sizes of 2 to 12 and
include 399 batches of homemade cookies from an
unknown volunteer, who wishes to be nameless. This volunteer buys the
ingredients, bakes and
packages the cookies as a part of her mission.
The volunteers seperate the baskets by size and they also put out a
table of fresh produce donated by various food pantries and Bueller’s
Market, who also provides a gift certificate to be passed out for a
Christmas ham.
The production starts in September each year with a
food drive at the local schools where they collect canned foods. They
keep the schools involved all the way up to delivery where the high
school sends various athletic teams to help unload trucks of packed with
huge pallets of 50 lb bags of white potatoes and with delivering the
baskets.
After packing the baskets, passing them out and helping the customers to their cars from 9AM to Noon, Tim then helps with a church group that brings an additional 28 families who they assist with filling their baskets with food stuffs. By 6:30PM Tim is taking off the Santa suit and heading home to his own family. I asked Tim why he does this and he says “Hey somebody helped me and my family when I was unemployed, so I said then if I ever get back on my feet I wanted to repay that generousity!” “It’s not only paying it forward, but also paying it back!”