28
COVER STORY
NEW JERSEY COPS ■ JANUARY 2015
makes you appreciate what you have when you go home to
your families.”
So many great stories have come from the efforts the past 25
years, but one seems to tell the story of this toy story.
“We went into one of the units one year at Tomorrow’s Children’s Institute in Hackensack and one of the moms asked if her
six-year-old girl could meet Santa,” Nicoletti recalls, sounding
so much like a narrator in a Christmas movie. “We went in there
with some gifts, and when she saw Santa, her face… she was so
ecstatic, she was so happy. We all had that feeling you feel in
your heart when you have given a priceless gift. As we’re leaving,
her mom comes out to thank us. Then, she tells us that her
daughter has terminal cancer and probably won’t make it until
Christmas. Well, there wasn’t a dry eye on the floor. We were all
sobbing it up. How can you not feel for this child?
“And I think that’s the driving force because every year there’s
a child who is not going home for the holidays. And then you
meet the families where there is so much financial stress that
we can truly make a difference.”
Certainly, there’s so much that puts the drive in this toy drive.
Toy Story
Ironically, there’s really no great story about
how this toy story began. Local 233 is made up of
Closter, Northvale, Harrington Park and Norwood
and those four departments hit the streets to collect toys from local merchants and residents. In
the early years, Nicoletti took on the role as committee chair and grew into the
driving force over time.
The Bergen County Toy Drive is actually the culmination of
many Local toy drives in which the toys are massed in Closter a
week or so before Christmas. Nicoletti says it really grew more
by word of mouth or by Locals coming out to see the collection
day events and coming back next year with a truckload to contribute.
And though he downplays his role, Nicoletti really is all about
the toy drive. Katie Weaver, an officer with the Old Tappan Police
Department that is part of Pascack Valley Local 206, used to
work out in the same gym with Nicoletti where he recruited her
to be part of the Bergen County Toy Drive team. She recruited
other members of Local 206, which includes Emerson,
Haworth, Oradell and Park Ridge, and they spend several weeks
before collection day putting out boxes around the five towns
to procure donations.
“It’s all about the unity,” says Weaver, who also heads the state
organization “Ladies in Blue fighting in Pink” which benefits
breast cancer awareness. “That, and the fact that we’re always
there to give, not to take. It makes me feel amazing that we can
give something to kids that makes them feel better for a day, a
week, a year or whatever.”
The magnitude of the toy
drive has so many manifestations. The most prominent of these, perhaps, is the
volume of toys collected.
They are able to keep a shed
full of gifts after the holidays
that are used to re-stock the
hospitals, so when the really