Airman delivers teddy bears to ill children

  • Published
  • By Corey Dahl
  • 21st Space Wing Public Affairs
PETERSON AFB, Colo. --  Spending Christmas in the hospital? Bad. Spending Christmas in the hospital as a kid? Even worse.

But one local Airman helped make the holidays a little brighter for ill children this year.

Staff Sgt. Thomas Moore worked with local nonprofit Child Care Connections, Inc., in December, collecting more than 160 new teddy bears for Penrose Community Hospital's pediatrics department. Sergeant Moore personally delivered the bears to the children Dec. 20 and said organizing the drive was more than worth the effort.

"When you deliver the bears, you see their faces go from blah to happy," he said. "When you see a child smile and you know that they're happy, when maybe they haven't been in a while, it's just heart touching."

This is the fourth year Sergeant Moore, who works for the Space Missile Systems Center here, has run the Teddy Bears for Kids drive, a project he dreamed up with several of his co-workers in 2003. Looking for ways to give back to the community during Christmas, they wanted to do something to help people who weren't already served by other giveaways and drives.

"There was no one really taking stuff to hospitals to give to the kids there," Sergeant Moore said. "And we thought, 'Wouldn't it really suck to be a kid in the hospital? At Christmas time?'"

The small group of Airmen continued to run the drive until this year, when, due to retirements, station changes and separations, Sergeant Moore was the only member of the group left at Peterson. Looking for help, Sergeant Moore contacted Child Care Connections in October, and the group agreed to help him organize the drive from now on.

Working together, Sergeant Moore and Child Care Connections ended up collecting more than 300 bears using drop boxes set up around the base and the community. Only the new, unused bears were able to go to the hospital because of sanitary reasons, so the used ones will be given to other local agencies that serve children, Sergeant Moore said.

The number of bears collected was a new record for the drive, which gathered only about 100 bears in its first year. Sergeant Moore said he thinks that record can be broken in the years to come - especially now that Child Care Connections is involved.
"We just keep getting more donations every year," he said. "Now that Child Care Connections is helping, they can make sure this is still around, even after I leave."

For more information on Child Care Connections, Inc., visit their Web site at www.childcareconnections.net.

 

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