The community came together to provide lower income children with Christmas presents. This after dozens of families were scammed out of gifts by someone online who promised to sponsor them.
Someone posting under the name Audreyanna Rodriguez told more than 50 families she would be their Christmas angel and buy gifts for children in lower income families.
But she never showed up on Saturday, delivery day.
“It’s just overwhelming,” said Justin Kretlow.
Kretlow was the first one to work Monday morning at Pat’s Precision Auto Care in Glendale.
He said 10 minutes before 8am, the first donation came in.
“Within a matter of two or three hours, we are almost exceeding what we were expecting on having.”
Boxes and bags full of toys were brought. Many of you taking up our call to help.
“I heard it on the news,” one donator said. “And I’m thinking, that’s sad, that’s rotten.”
Another woman who donated, Linda Wetzel, unloaded her truck full of stuffed animals and board games.
“We have this stuff so we might as well get rid of some of it.”
The biggest surprise of all, a 32-foot trailer stacked with toys, dolls and books showed up.
The man behind the massive donation was Charles Gastineau, who owns both C2 Moving and Three Men and a Truck.
“We are also in the moving and the storage industry,” he said. “So we had the opportunity to gain about 13 storage units and that’s what we’ve been doing, just passing out toys to everybody.”
Every child who was scammed will now have something to open on Christmas day.
Leftover toys will go to other children in both the Facebook group and at local charities, including the Salvation Army.
