RICHMOND, Ky. (LEX 18) — A Madison County car dealership has collected hundreds of toys for local children through a strategic partnership with law enforcement and school counselors.
Camaro Central, a business that caters to car enthusiasts, organized its annual toy drive with a more targeted approach this year. CEO Ben Tucker said the company worked with school resource counselors to identify children in need and partnered with local fire and police departments for distribution.
"We told them we were going to get a semi-truck full, might not have hit that mark, but came pretty close," Tucker said.
Tucker’s business, which caters to car enthusiasts, has done this toy drive before, but this time they were a little more strategic about how they went about it. They were able to work off a list of children in need with help from various school resource counselors. Now they’ll have two invaluable resources to help distribute everything that’s been donated.
“Partnering with the fire department and the police department; those guys know who needs toys in this area, so we felt really good about that, and it was a whole team effort here at Camaro Central,” Tucker explained.
Tucker said he leaned on his clientele to help make this happen, knowing that those with the ability to have an expensive car hobby would also have a little more disposable income to help with this project. He was right. They came through in a big way. The lobby at their office was packed with toys and bicycles and it took many people making several trips to load everything up into those trucks.
“It turned out incredibly better than I ever imagined that it would,” said Richmond Chief of Police, Rodney Richardson.
With the hard part accomplished, the fun part comes later this month.
“Santa comes to visit us before his big trip around on Christmas, so we'll be taking Santa Claus around to certain areas of the city, and you'll see these toys and he'll be giving them out,” Chief Richardson said.
That distribution event is scheduled Dec. 22 and Dec. 23.
“Richmond been great to us, this is a way we can give back,” Tucker said.
