Policeman Helps Needy Families
By Bill Spring
You don't have to have a long white beard and a big red suit to be Santa Claus. Each holiday season, men and women from all walks of life step into the role of Santa, giving of themselves to help others. One such honorary Kris Kringle is Capt. Hector Garcia, 38, of the Palm Beach County, Fla., School Police Department, who leads an annual December drive to bring food, clothing and toys to families who need them most.
Garcia entered law enforcement in 1987, joining the Del Rey Beach Police Department right out of college. For three years he patrolled the community's streets, but he couldn't help feeling that there must be a better way to make a difference.
"I was a little disheartened that the job was so reactive," he explains. Garcia was responding to crime after the fact, when he really wanted to be dealing with the roots of the problem.
The turning point came in the dark, pre-dawn hours of a day in October 1990. Garcia stood over the body of a crack addict who had died in the street. He realized there was nothing he could have done to help this person. "I knew I needed to do something where I could prevent this happening to somebody else," he says.
A month later, Garcia accepted a position with the school police. "School policing is one of the truest forms of community policing," he says. "We're actually preventing crime. We're trying to divert students from the criminal justice system."
Stationed at a large urban high school, Garcia, like his fellow officers, was tasked with a wide variety of responsibilities, from making law presentations to students to meeting with parents and teachers, counseling children, and working to prevent drug abuse. "We like to consider the school a microcosm of society," Garcia says. "What you have there is a small city."
Helping students solve the problems in their lives gave Garcia the sense of purpose and satisfaction that responding to street calls did not. After five years, he accepted a promotion to captain in administration.
In 1997, Garcia faced a second turning point, though he did not know then how much it would change his life and career.
"I ran across a family," he remembers, "that was indigent, and didn't have anything for Christmas." Garcia dipped into his pocket to provide holiday toys for the family's children. The following December, Garcia repeated the holiday sponsorship, and persuaded a co-worker to do the same. "And then," he says, "it just exponentially grew. Last year we went up to 88 families."
Garcia, of course, cannot provide all this assistance by himself. What started with a simple act has grown into an organized volunteer effort called the Family Holiday Drive. Garcia runs the annual program with fellow officers Todd Dockswell and Fil Arroyo, and the three have formed a tax-exempt organization called the Family Charity Foundation to help with the increasingly complex mission of aiding worthy Palm Beach families.
Garcia and his many volunteers interview the families and compile detailed information, from housing problems and clothing sizes to the top three gift wishes of the children. Preserving the anonymity of the needy, the volunteers do their best to match them with financially stable families, businesses and individuals willing to give aid. "They go out shopping specifically for these families," Garcia says, "and there's a sense of personal gratification. They'll call back and say, 'Give me two more families.' "
But every year there are families left over, especially when economic uncertainty forces individuals and businesses to cut back on charitable donations, as is the case this December. "This year, half of the families are left over," says Garcia, "and that's where myself and my two partners come in."
Using corporate donations, money raised at a charity dinner and quite often their own cash, Garcia, Dockswell and Arroyo each play Santa Claus to dozens of families, delivering everything from food and clothing to washing machines.
To prove that the program is making a real difference, Garcia sites the example of aid recipients who have gotten on their feet and decided to give something back.
"Two families that we helped out years ago," he says, "are today sponsoring their own families."
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