Cruisers hold ninth annual Cruising for Tots and Pack 9 Toy Run

CALEDONIA, Miss. (WCBI) — The Southern Cruisers Car Club and Cub Scouts of Pack Nine held their ninth annual Cruisin for Tots and Pack Nine Toy Run.

Things started rolling in the Sweet Peppers parking lot this morning at 7.

The group then moved up the road to the old Bargain Hunt parking lot to accept donations before making the toy run back to Caledonia and the Pack Nine Cub Scouts Club House.

Santa and the Grinch made their big arrival, and the cub scouts unloaded toys for the community.

You could call it a ‘snowball effect’.

Eleven years ago, Philesa Desmidt wanted to do a community project as a den mother for the cub scouts, so she started a toy drive.

A year later, Schatzi Collier, a member of the Southern Cruisers Car Club joined her.

That led Carl Ulmer, president of the car club, to come aboard.

“I joined Schatzi and Philesa here about nine years ago and started helping raise money and donations for toys. Our car club joined in with Pack Nine to make it a little bigger event and try to promote it to gather more donations for toys and money,” Ulmer said.

Desmidt said they collect toys, then people in the community will be able to nominate deserving families to receive the toys for children ages three to twelve.

“What I do, once we are done collecting toys which we collect through probably the 14th of December, and then I’ll take all the toys and I’ll separate them like in a store and I’ll separate them by age and gender. And people nominate families, it all confidential, The families come in and actually get to shop for their children,” Desmidt said.

Ulmer said they also take monetary donations and if there’s a child that’s older that twelve, they’ll use the money to purchase a gift for that child.

“We take cash donations also to where we can buy toys that benefit – if a family needs toys or something for an older child we’ll go and purchase that to where an older child will have something for Christmas,” Ulmer said.

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