Call her "Jan-a-Claus." That's what self-described elf Bruce Bender calls Jan Hall.
Hall does more Christmas shopping than most people, hurrying around the Teton Valley with a tattered spiral notebook that lists the names and ages of 132 children.On Wednesday at a clothing store in Driggs, Hall, Bender and other helpers paged through the list of needy children and picked out clothing: shirts, Levi's, sweaters, pullover windbreakers, or anything they knew the child needed or wanted.
The next stop was the Corner Drug. Snow had started falling outside as Hall strode across the street toward to the drug store, trying to light a cigarette. At the store she rang up $160 worth of coloring books, dolls and other toys.
This was just the last-minute shopping for Hall, the Tetonia resident behind a program called Subs for Santa, an effort to give Christmas gifts to the valley's poor children.
"It was an accident," Hall said, describing how the program start-ed three years ago. "I wanted my kids to realize they're spoiled rotten."
So she was going to have them take some of the money they would get at Christmas and buy gifts for a needy family in the Teton Valley. She ended up helping 12 families that year.
The program has grown each Christmas, delivering gifts to 96 children last year.
This year, the group raised $2,500 in cash and accumulated a roomful of donated toys, mostly from a benefit dance.
"It doesn't look much like a sleigh, does it?" she said of her dirty white Camaro. Bender wore a long green, pointed elf's cap trimmed with white fur that he had slipped over the top of a cowboy hat.
"It's for kids who might not have a Christmas otherwise," said Bender. Hall compiled her list of kids with the help of churches, schools and the Head Start program.