PHOENIX — Angelina Sage headed for a Goodwill store in metropolitan Phoenix's West Valley on Thursday with $8 and change in her pocket, expecting to scour the dollar racks for clothes for her two young daughters.
That was before the Secret Santa brigade fanned out in the store, handing out $100 bills to stunned shoppers. Sage, of Glendale, was overwhelmed by the windfall, and not sure it was real.
Secret Santas hand out cash to strangers
The windfall allowed her to expand her shopping horizons to include some toys for the children, ages 6 and 3.
"I can get whatever I want for my girls," she said, smiling.
This is the fifth year that retired FBI agents Steve Chenoweth and Larry McCormick have helped organize and operate the Secret Santa effort in the Valley. They call themselves "elves." The people who supply the money are strictly anonymous. No names, no pictures. It's in keeping with the tradition of the original Secret Santa, a Midwestern man who handled out about $1.3 million in his years of surprise donations.
The Valley Santas estimate that about $40,000 was handed out in last year's campaign. They figure it will be a little less this year by the time they're done hopscotching from dollar stores to bus stops to police stations and schools. The two-day effort winds up today.
The elves have the ultimate fun job. They drive around the city in a big van with a police escort; they like to make unexpected stops to surprise people waiting for buses, so they need traffic control.
The caravan's first stop Thursday was a police station in north Phoenix, where Officer Karen Freund accepted several hundred dollars in a surprise setup by her colleagues at the Cactus Park Precinct. Her husband, Harold Bullis, also a Phoenix police officer, was in San Diego. He has three sons. One recently lost two legs and an arm serving in Afghanistan and is recuperating in California. The money will help with family expenses.
Jessica Ramirez of Phoenix was sitting in a Greyhound Bus Lines station on Glendale Avenue, waiting for a midmorning bus to Tucson. She's moving there one bus trip at a time. Her truck's tires are shot and she can't afford new ones and wants to be close to her grandmother, who is fighting cancer. The $200 will help.
"There is a God," she said, between tears.
A Santa walked up to Dan Bloom of Phoenix as Bloom sat in his wheelchair under an umbrella on a street corner in the northwest Valley. He was holding an advertising sign for a cellphone company.
"This is awesome," he said. "It's totally unexpected. I'm just here doing my job."
The caravan rolled on, stopping at the Carl T. Hayden VA Medical Center and Wilson Primary School.
An assembly of third-graders at the school received coloring books and heard the story of Larry Stewart, the original Secret Santa. Stewart gave away about $1.3 million in more than a quarter-century of giving. He died in 2007 at the age of 58 of complications of esophageal cancer.
His tradition lives on via the Society of Secret Santas, the anonymous people who donate the money. The group said Santas will hit about six metro areas this year. They don't name the cities in advance so the visits will be a surprise.
Children at the school sang "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" for the Santa crew. Afterward, Chenoweth, the former FBI agent, said he loved making the rounds every year.
"Once you do it, you're hooked," he said.