Shining Stars shopping spree helps kids
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POLSON — Shining Stars has a goal — to help the kids in our community — according to Kim Leibenguth, Polson High School resource officer.
Shining Stars is a group composed of the Lake County Deputies Association and Wal-Mart employees. At Christmas the group takes tags from Share the Spirit and buys gifts and necessities for children. This year they already have 175 tags, and Monday, Dec. 20 was their “Shop with a Cop” day at Wal-Mart. Eighth graders from the Polson Middle School Peer Counseling class and a few parents joined Lake County Sheriff’s Deputies Mathieu Gfroerer, Nate Lundeen, Erwin Lobdell, Leibenguth and Under Sheriff Jay Doyle for a shopping spree. Shoppers were armed with Share the Spirit tags and shopping carts and set loose in Wal-Mart to pick cute clothes and boots in the correct sizes.
To help fund Shining Stars, they held a craft and bake sale at the Lake County Courthouse on Dec. 17.
Wal-Mart employees baked cookies, bars and pies and sewed pillows, tote bags, receiving blankets and made jewelry and wooden items and other crafts. The rest of the funding comes from grants and donations.
Leibenguth said she likes the PMS students to help with the shopping so they will see what other kids would like for Christmas. Often children ask for basic items, such as snowpants, gloves, boots, pillows and blankets or one toy, like a truck or a Barbie. Hopefully, the middle schoolers will think about these kids when they ask for an iPod or an Xbox.
After the shoppers finish at Wal-Mart, it takes several vehicles to ferry all the gifts to Share the Spirit.
But all that work and money will make Christmas brighter for area children.
