30
COVER STORY
NEW JERSEY COPS ■ JANUARY 2015
changed to “25 years of enforcing the list.”
“It takes dedication to be on the SRT,” notes Aiello, who
helped design the logo. “That and holiday cheer.”
cer Hospital and the Joseph M. Sanzari Children's Hospital at
Hackensack Medical Center, as well as Valley Hospital in
Ridgewood. This is where Santa takes over.
Nicoletti explains that the toy drive collects everything
from “rattles to high-end electronics.” They like to save the
electronics like iPads and Nintendo DS units for the cancer
patients and terminally-ill children who don’t have a chance
to play the real games.
Santa Claus is Local 233 member Luis Ruiz, who 10 years
ago stepped into the big red suit at the last minute. He was so
good that his colleagues at the Closter PD told him he had to
do it again. Two years ago, his triplets made him promise he
would continue playing Santa.
On collection day, cars start lining up about 10 a.m. and the
line extends about a block down the road leading into the fire
house. These are people mostly in trucks and vans, and the
scene resembles what you might see at a car wash on the first
sunny day of spring.
“My first year it just got into my heart and soul,” Ruiz confides. “It hit me emotionally that I was able to give this happiness to these kids, kids that I don’t know, kids who if I give
them a small toy or a big toy, it doesn’t matter. They just love
getting something from Santa. They smile at me, and sometimes I think I am Santa Claus.”
A vehicle pulls in and SRT members ask, “What do you
need?” A typical response might be something like this from
Caitlin Byrne of Sheltered Sisters of Bergen County which
treats women who are victims of domestic violence: “Baby
and toddler stuff and teen stuff.”
Like a court attending to a royal carriage, cops filled her van
with nine bags of presents. Byrne smiles but you can see a
tear trying to forge its way down her cheek.
“Most of our families are below the poverty line, working
jobs paying minimum wage because they are trying to
recover from the effects of domestic violence,” she explains.
“This will make a huge difference because our moms can’t
afford food, let alone gifts.”
When the last of the vans comes through, the SRT changes
course and begins to load the big box trucks that will go to
Tomorrow’s Children’s Institute for Blood and Pediatric Can-
Any doubt about that dissipated last year at Hack Med
where a nurse told Ruiz a little girl was upset because she
didn’t get to see Santa. There was one problem, he was told:
She didn’t speak English, only Spanish.
“I said, ‘no problem, Santa does speak Spanish.’” Ruiz continued. “I walked in, started speaking Spanish to the family
and she lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Said Nicoletti: “My heart went numb. It was like our own
version of Miracle on 34th Street.”
Toy Story 3: The cops that keep
on giving
Clearly, miracles do happen at the Bergen County PBA Toy
Drive. What other explanation could there be for the sunnyand-mid-60s weather that accompanied the 2014 event?
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&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&when the trucks headed to &the hospitals
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Even at 2 p.m.,
were all but loaded, there were still plenty of Legos, radiocontrolled race cars and American Girl dolls remaining in the
fire house. Anybody could have taken home a sack of toys to
their kids, but these law enforcement officers were here to
give, not receive. They had already received the gifts they
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came for.
“I don’t have the vocabulary to say how wonderful this is
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other than to say how wonderful it is,” exclaimed Second
Vice-President Pete Andreyev who & &
represented the State PBA
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at the event. “Just putting together an event like this must be
overwhelming. It’s all that much more of a tribute.”
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If& the &drive continues to grow &
like it has, there might be a
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day when it& has to be run out of the Garden State Plaza or Met
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Life Stadium. Ruiz says he will keep coming back to play
Santa as long as he can. Nicoletti has retired to a job as a
school security officer in Lodi, but come next September he
will be back in drive.
The penchant for giving that runs deep in PBA members
and all law enforcement officers will no doubt shift this event
into overdrive. So with regard to this toy story, you can be sure
about one thing:
To be continued. d