Salvation Army makes Christmas happen for Las Vegas families

Hundreds of parents lined up in the cold to pick up bags of toys for their children at the Cashman Center on Saturday morning.

“There was a line by the time I got here at 7:15 this morning,” said Maj. Rhonda Lloyd of the Salvation Army. “We didn’t even start giving out bags until 8.”

More than 200 volunteers spent five weeks filling 2,000 red bags with toys for more than 6,000 Las Vegas children whose parents don’t have the resources to buy them Christmas presents.

“There are people who literally wouldn’t be able to have Christmas without this,” Lloyd said.

The 2,000 families who qualified for the program were given a specific time to pick up their bags filled with two toys per child. Fifty to 60 families joined the line to get their Christmas goodies every 15 minutes.

“We can get them through pretty quickly,” Lloyd said.

Ana Espinoza was one of many parents who fell on hard times after her husband was laid off in October. She still has a difficult time buying Christmas presents for her kids. Espinoza said she found out about the Salvation Army’s toy giveaway within the same week of her husband losing his job.

“The stress is gone because I can give a few gifts to my kids,” she said. “We’re just doing what we do, but our kids have no idea about our finances. We’re behind on our mortgage, so it’s hard. But we’re doing it for the kids.”

Espinoza said she’s grateful for the toy giveaway so she can provide for her 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.

Besides the two toys per child, each bag included a $20 food card.

“We spent $40,000 on food cards,” Lloyd said. “There’s more needs than we can meet, but everyone for the most part seems grateful.”

The price of each toy generally ranged from $15 to $30. Children ages 13 to 14 years old received two movie tickets and a gift card instead of toys.

All families that applied for a toy bag had to bring a document showing where they lived, birth certificates for all of their children, and a proof of income.

Lloyd said there were a few families who had 12 children, and one who had 16.

Parents were full of smiles as they left Cashman Center with toys and money for Christmas dinner.

“The kids gets so excited,” said Leslee Rogers, a spokeswoman for the Salvation Army. “That’s what we like to be about.”

Contact reporter Steven Slivka at sslivka @reviewjournal.com. Follow @StevenSlivka on Twitter.