Santa Claus makes appearance at the Pirtleville Fire Department

The Pirtleville Fire Department held their annual Children’s Christmas Party on Dec. 22; the event was a huge success.

Santa Claus was on hand to give out over 900 bags of candy to the children of Pirtleville, Douglas and the surrounding areas.

“Every year we prepare around 500 or 600 bags of candy, this year we made over 900 bags of candy thanks to the support of businesses like Wal-Mart, Food City, Coca-Cola, Kalil, Frito-Lay,” Pirtleville Fire Department Chief, Tony Vaca said. “As well as community members and so many people from Pirtleville who make their donations to the Fire Department and contribute to this cause. We really appreciate their support.”

According to Sylvia Vaca, the Chief’s wife and owner of Pirtleville’s grocery store, this event has been held for over 30 years.

“One year it seemed as if we were running out of cake. There was a line around the building I came in and told Trini (Arvayo) I don’t think we’ll have enough cake for everyone. Trini said ‘have faith, you’ve heard the story of God and how he feed many with only a little fish. This is our fish,’” Vaca said. “I went about the my day forgetting about the cake and when I came back in Trini asked how many more people we had I told him we were done and he said ‘look we have four pieces of cake left.’”

“It’s getting harder and harder every year to get donations but we’re still able to do this because we have faith that it will work out,” he added.

The PFD staff along with many volunteers handed out candy bags, hotdogs and cake to all those who attended.

“This is the best part of being a board member,” PFD Board Member, Clarissa Whicker said. “Seeing all these kids here and all the hard work the fire department staff does for the community.”