WASILLA — If your child comes home from school today with a glow-stick to make trick-or-treating a bit safer, you have Kelly Swihart to thank.

Make that Swihart and a cadre of volunteers.

For the second year in a row, Swihart, a sergeant with the Wasilla Police Department, spearheaded Operation Glow, which, using grant money, bought glow-sticks for every Valley child in elementary school. “We’re doing the same thing with the glow-sticks, but man I’ve had just an overwhelming outpouring of support from the community,” Swihart said.

The sticks come with lanyards so children can wear them around their necks. Last year Swihart held a little gathering at the police station to attach sticks to lanyards.

But this year, he said, so many people volunteered to help that he quickly realized the department’s training room would be too small. He had to move the operation to the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center.

And on Tuesday, in one of the complex’s meeting rooms, evidence of how much support Swihart got was hard to miss.

At one table, students from Mat-Su Youth Court chatted as they worked. At another, Alaska State Trooper Captain Dennis Cassanovas attached one glow stick after another to lanyards. There were Palmer and Wasilla officers and Alaska State Troopers, some in uniform, some not. There were teachers scattered about and it seemed every other person brought his or her children, a number of whom were also lending a hand.

Captain Hans Brinke, who heads up the troopers’ Bureau of Highway Patrol brought his family.

“It’s great, a good family activity,” he said. “Kelly did a great job.”

One thing different this year, Swihart said, had to do with the pizza on hand for the volunteers. Scheduling snafus and budget cycles conspired against Wasilla police this year, he said, leaving not quite enough money for dinner.

“I talked to Evangelo’s about providing food for the volunteers and man they stepped right up,” he said. The restaurant provided 20 free pizzas and all the necessary utensils.

All told, Swihart said, the operation put lanyards on 7,500 glow sticks. He said 1,000 of those were done at Wasilla High School after a special education teacher asked if her students could help.

The sticks were bundled into groups of 25 and packed into boxes. Swihart said the different agencies would do the delivering — Palmer police would take the boxes to Palmer schools, etc.

And, in theory at least, all 7,091 elementary school student will get one. That leaves 400-or-so extras, Swihart said. Some will be on hand at police headquarters. Some will go to private schools who’ve already asked if they could get in on Operation Glow.

Swihart said coming up with a head count from the school district was actually one of the toughest parts of the whole operation.

“Those number are always changing,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.