Oak Hill High School senior Grace Woodard is leading the second annual Drive through Toy Drive on Saturday at the Sabattus Police Department. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal Buy this Photo

SABATTUS – An Oak Hill High School senior who started a holiday toy drive last year plans to repeat the successful endeavor.

The Drive through Toy Drive will take place from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Sabattus Police Department.

Grace Woodard, 17, said as the holiday season approached last year she wanted to help families in Regional School Unit 4 towns of Litchfield, Sabattus and Wales. The Oak Hill Legislative Assembly, of which she is a member, put together holiday baskets for families who needed extra help.

“I wanted to do something more than that, so I brainstormed and came up with the idea of a toy drive,” Woodard said. When she told school resource officer John Dalbec, “he said I could use the Sabattus Police Department as a venue.”

The outcome was “tremendous,” she said. “We had four tables piled up with toys. We had so much that we didn’t know what to do with it all.”

Students and police officers are volunteer elves so donors don’t have to get out of their vehicles.

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“People take their unwrapped or unopened toys and gifts for kids ages zero to 18, pull up to the Sabattus Police Department, roll down their windows and hand gifts to our elves,” Woodard said.

Donations included toys, art supplies, headphones, new stuffed animals and remote-control cars.

Oak Hill Legislative Assembly determines what toys and gifts go to which family.

“All of the families are anonymous,” Woodard said. “We don’t know what toys are going to what families. We just organize the toys based on what age group they should go to.”

Any surplus is donated to a local charity, she said.

Woodard has been a member of the Oak Hill Legislative Assembly since she was a freshman, and following her successful toy drive, she was placed in charge of the holiday baskets.

She said she will attend college next year to become a physician or a physician’s assistant, but won’t abandon her project.

“I already have a recruit next year to become the next me and take over the organization of the toy drive,” she said. “I plan to keep in touch with Officer Dalbec so I can figure out my next community outreach project.”

mdaigle@sunmediagroup.net


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