Toys for Tots needed muscle. Dads incarcerated at the Pierce County Jail stepped in

Pierce County Toys for Tots needed muscle.

It’s been a tough year for the program.

And in the craze leading up to Christmas, organizers needed help loading and unloading trucks full of toys at a former casino on the Tacoma Tideflats that serves as the nonprofit’s warehouse.

Four inmates at the Pierce County Jail volunteered.

“We all have kids,” 47-year-old Steven E. Williams told The News Tribune as he worked Thursday. “It’s good to give back.”

He, 47-year-old Richard Carlile, 42-year-old Robert Green and 28-year-old Jordan Smith usually pick up trash around Pierce County as the member’s of the jail’s voluntary road crew.

This week, they helped prepare toys to be sent to kids in need.

“We don’t feel like we’re in jail,” Williams said about volunteering. “We feel like we’re part of the community.”

The inmates don’t deliver the toys or drive the trucks, said Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer, who is also involved with Toys for Tots.

They are trained to use pallet jacks and truck lift-gates to get the toys ready for distribution.

“If we didn’t have them, we’d be in trouble,” Troyer said.

George Hilbish, the Pierce County Toys for Tots coordinator, said the program gave about 48,000 toys to about 24,000 kids last year, not including the many stocking stuffers and stuffed animals also distributed.

He hopes they’ll give out about that many toys this year as well, but he noted that the need seems to increase each year. And they lost somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 gifts when Toys R Us folded, he said.

One of the Toys for Tots organizers, Michelle Brennan, noticed as she surveyed the warehouse Thursday that they needed more sports balls.

“We need to go shopping,” she said.

Meanwhile, a call came in about a Pierce County family whose Christmas gifts had been stolen from their vehicle.

“We’ll take care of that,” said her husband, Jeff Brennan, another organizer. “Happens quite a bit.”

The program is accepting last-minute donations at Tacoma fire stations and TAPCO Credit Union and Les Schwab Tire Center locations.

Sheriff’s spokesman Troyer said the Tacoma fire station and Les Schwab collections in particular have helped fill the Toys R Us void, as have employees at Boeing in Frederickson.

“We are able to do what we need to do, but it was a lot harder this year,” he said.

Inmates from the Washington Corrections Center for Women helped sort toys in previous years when the program used a warehouse in downtown Tacoma.

That arrangement didn’t work logistically after the owner of the downtown warehouse sold, and Toys for Tots moved to the Tideflats into the old casino space offered by the Puyallup Tribe.

Troyer said Pierce County Jail volunteers have helped from time to time through the years but never to this extent in the rush before Christmas.

To be on the road crew, inmates have to have a history of good behavior while incarcerated, and their crimes or alleged crimes can’t be violent felonies.

“They really have to earn their way onto this team,” Troyer said. “It’s a huge privilege.”

The group was supervised at the warehouse Thursday by corrections deputy Nick Lee.

In between moving toys, Carlile told The News Tribune that he’s thankful to be 453 days sober and that he plans to become an automotive master mechanic in hybrid and alternate fuels when jail is behind him.

He has five adult children and four grandkids — the youngest a 7-month-old.

He said he was happy to help out Toys for Tots during the pre-Christmas rush.

“Four guys out of 1,000-plus in jail,” he said. “For that privilege, we might as well work hard.”

This story was originally published December 20, 2018 at 3:34 PM.