Centralia Police Officers handing out gifts as part of the Shop with a Cop program Saturday morning. Left to right: Andrew Brandt, Travis Ripperda, Blake Dukes, Stacey Jolliff, Chief Greg Dodson, Steve Daley, and Gary Denton.
The 33-year tradition of Shop with a Cop continued in Centralia this weekend, but in a different format due to COVID-19.
The department’s chief telecommunicator Stacey Jolliff says $40,000 in generous donations allowed them to provide gifts to 180 kids in Centralia area grade schools. But this year, a drive-through format was held at the Centralia Walmart.
“Actually shopped for the children beforehand so this week we spent a couple days at Walmart, approximately 10 hours of shopping and we included the Tri Chi girls this year to help us out. It was a pretty big task to take on shopping for 180 children. And today we have been handing out gifts through a drive thru at Wal-Mart to the six schools that we had.”
The schools, Schiller, Jordan, Centralia Junior High, Willow Grove, Central City and North Wamac, provided the names of the kids to participate.
This is the 28th year Centralia Police Chief Greg Dodson has helped with the program, starting with his rookie year on the Central City Department.
“It is a big disappointment to not have that interaction to be able to take those kids shopping, but this is safer for the kids and officers. Hopefully this is a one year blip and we go back to how we did it in the past.”
Jolliff says most of the major fund raisers for the program could not be held this year, but businesses were extremely generous with a mail appeal that brought in most of the $40,000 needed to fund the program.
