PALMER — For more than 13 years the Mat-Su Special Santa Program has helped provide gifts for children and families in need.

“We have helped over 12,000 children since our beginning in 1997, starting with 90 kids the first year and growing to more than 2500 kids last year,” said founder and CEO Mari Jo Parks.

Parks, a former schoolteacher and now a career counselor by profession, saw a need thirteen years ago and filled it. “I started with foster kids and then expanded to more and more families each year,” she said.

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Three years later as her program grew, Parks reached out to all the Mat-Su charity organizations and consolidated them into the Special Santa Program. The program under her supervision is now the distributor for Toys for Tots and is the largest gift-giving organization in the Mat-Su Valley.

“The outreach from the community has been tremendous and without their support none of this would be possible,” said Parks. She said that the number of volunteers has grown from a handful the first year to more than 500 the past three years.

“It is amazing each year we have our own separate miracles that make the program work,” she said. “For the last two years the storage units were given to us free of charge, this year the hockey team is helping load, transport and unload gifts and equipment. Oh yeah, and the U-Haul we are using is free of charge as well.”

The Special Santa Program operates as a volunteer (a Special Santa) picks up a wish list for a child and buys two items off the list.

“Sometimes it is a toy truck or doll and other times it is winter clothes and necessities,” said Parks. “We buy two presents for every child on our wish list, so without volunteers buying gifts year-round it becomes very difficult.”

Then the volunteers help sort the gifts to the proper recipients and organize all the toys from the two storage locations.

“As every child receives two gifts — and last year we had 2,500 kids — the gifts start to really add up,” said Parks.

In fact, there are so many gifts that Parks said the organization has to assign a four-day pickup period between Dec. 18 and 22.

“Doing the pickup alphabetically helps organize the process, but it is still a lot going on in those four days,” she said. “I am just thankful that the community has opened its arms to us, it really makes a big difference.”

If you’re interested in becoming a Special Santa or volunteering, contact the Special Santa hotline at 9761-3770 or visit www.specialsanta.org.

Contact Lanier Hutcheson at lanier.hutcheson@frontiersman.com or 352-2265.