Cops Who Care

Twenty Seven years ago I was a rookie cop with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office assigned with ten other deputies to the Wickenburg Substation. Our beat areas encompassed an area larger than the state of Rhode Island with a population base of approximately eight thousand residents.

A few weeks before Christmas the deputies started passing a hat to collect money to buy to needy families in the area. Just under $200.00 was collected just enough money perhaps to buy Christmas presents for the children of two families. Then we had a major problem, we all had to agree which two families were most deserving.

I spoke up and said that we still had another two weeks and what if we went out to the community and asked for their help in raising some more money so we could add a few more kids to our list. A few of the officers agreed and I also enlisted the help of officers from the Wickenburg Police Department and the Arizona Department of Public Service.

We wrote an article for the local newspaper, made some flyers and contacted several community service organizations in the area. Eight days later we had collected $10,000.00, enough money to buy over 200 needy children Christmas presents!

From this a nationally recognized program called Cops Who Care was born. Today our organization is involved in assisting at risk children providing scholarship programs, funding school projects and events, sports programs, the largest Easter egg hunt in Arizona and of course our Christmas toy drive.

Yesterday we had our toy distribution in Wickenburg and provided over 900 needy children. The following video explains our program and some of the children our organization has helped.

Merry Christmas!