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Deputies Answer Foster Children's Wishes

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By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 22, 2007

SEFFNER - It was a mystery that had Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Deputy Jason Vance baffled.

He reread the angel-shaped paper tag. Sure enough, the toddler's wish list said something about a Fisher-Price toy fountain. But Vance had been up and down every toy aisle at Wal-Mart in Seffner, and he could find nothing resembling a fountain.

Vance and his longtime partner, C.M. DeVage, finally gave up and decided to choose their own toy for the foster child. The problem was, neither DeVage nor Vance have children, so they admittedly were out of their element.

"But we both have nieces, nephews and godchildren, so we've bought our fair share of toys," DeVage said with a modicum of confidence.

Vance tried out Fisher Price's Cookie Shape Surprise learning toy but wasn't impressed.

"It's going to have to do something more than this," he said. "I don't feel like I'm learning anything."

DeVage favored Fisher-Price's Learning Puppy, mostly because it sings one of her favorite children's songs, "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." She tried to get Vance to sing along with her, but he was absorbed with the Learning Lawn Mower. Once again, he was disappointed.

"I'm not learning anything with this one, either," he said.

However, he did like the way the Learning Puppy taught children how to count on his toes with "This Little Puppy Went to Market." The two decided it was the winner. With a few dollars left over, they tossed in a Rock-A-Stack, a must-have for every child ages 6 to 36 months. Then they were on to the next angel.

Meanwhile, Deputy Donald Jorden was zipping up and down the toy aisles solo. Jorden, who has five children, considers himself a pro toy shopper.

This was his second year shopping for the sheriff's office's foster angel tree to benefit the Hillsborough County Foster Angels Program. The nonprofit, volunteer-run program aids the roughly 5,000 children in foster care in Hillsborough County.

Each holiday, the sheriff's office sponsors an angel tree with tags bearing the names of foster children and their wish lists, including shoe and clothing sizes. This year, the tree had 320 tags, and sheriff's office employees chose and shopped for 200 foster children. The remaining 120 children's wish lists were filled courtesy of Wal-Mart.

Like other benevolent programs that have become traditions for the sheriff's office, the foster angels tree program grew out of the good intentions of a single deputy.

Judy Woster of the Crime Prevention Bureau met and befriended then-store manager Laura DeJesus when she helped catch a shoplifter at the Seffner Wal-Mart. Seven years ago, when Woster and fellow deputies began sponsoring a foster angel tree during the holidays, DeJesus gave her a $250 donation. That donation grew over the years.

DeJesus has gone on to manage the Wal-Mart on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in Tampa. Seffner Wal-Mart assistant manager Kam Rovell now coordinates the donations for the Seffner Wal-Mart, and the Plant City store pitches in as well. This year, the stores collectively donated more than $4,500.

"I don't even have to ask Laura," Woster said. "She calls me up and asks me how much I need."

Woster also has some expert help with the program. Carolann Mullins joined the sheriff's office a year ago as a detention deputy after leaving the Coast Guard. A foster mother and adoptive parent of two, she has been a volunteer with the Hillsborough County Foster Angels Program for nine years. Her duties include setting up the foster angel trees and decorating them with tags.

"Having fostered children myself, I know what their needs are," Mullins said. "They often come to you with nothing but the clothes on their backs. What they need are things like a good pair of shoes, clothing, a bike and toys they can take with them."

"She's been a big help," Woster said. "This is my favorite time of year. I don't have any kids of my own, so these kids are my kids."

While Woster and her group were busy shopping, Deputy Diane Miller of the Crime Prevention Bureau still had some donations to secure before she could complete her list. A jazzercise group had a check waiting for her and, with 1,500 letters to Santa from the Sincerely Santa program, she was going to need all the money she could get.

"The Sincerely Santa program began in 1987 when an IBM executive got together with Hillsborough County school guidance counselors and asked them to have the neediest students in the school up to third grade write letters to Santa. IBM employees then filled the students' wishes," Miller said.

As the population grew, so did the program. Bank of America began taking letters. Westfield Brandon mall followed suit, offering letters to its customers. And other businesses jumped onboard.

Somewhere along the way, Miller became the program's coordinator.

"I've been doing it for 10 years," she said. "We do whatever shopping needs to be done. We warehouse the gifts, and we do all the delivery. It's really a grass-roots kind of thing."

The "we" she referred to is a team made up of Hillsborough sheriff's deputies, county code enforcement officers, Tampa and Hillsborough firefighters and rescue workers, Plant City and Temple Terrace police officers and a couple of off-duty Tampa police officers.

This year, the Sincerely Santa program received 1,500 letters. Since the organizers couldn't conceive of leaving out siblings, Miller and her team will provide gifts for about 3,600 children Christmas morning. That's a cinch compared with last year, when they filled the wish lists of more than 6,000 children.

"I was talking to a grandmother this morning who is caring for her grandchildren because their parents were killed in a car accident eight months ago," Miller said. "The 13-year-old boy is making all A's and B's in school, and all he was asking for was a pair of shoes."

Miller will make sure he receives much more than a pair of shoes this Christmas.

"Kids don't understand that their family is poor, that Santa isn't coming," she said. "We have an obligation to take care of the little ones."

"All kids should be able to have gifts to unwrap on Christmas morning," Jorden said.

"Just the thought of their smile is enough to make me want to do this, just them knowing somebody cares. It's almost like being an angel. They'll never see us, but that's part of the magic of this time of year."

Reporter D'Ann Lawrence White can be reached at (813) 657-4524 or dlwhite@tampatrib.com.

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