The Loganville Tribune

Area children get chance to shop with a hero

By Sharon Swanepoel
The Loganville Tribune

Published December 07, 2007

LOGANVILLE — Anybody shopping at Wal-Mart Saturday morning might have noticed a large police presence in the parking lot — but the reason wasn’t one anybody would have expected.

There was no armed robbery in progress, no hostage situation under way — there wasn’t even a shoplifter getting arrested. It was “Shop with a Hero” — a collaborative effort by the Church at the Grove, local law enforcement, Wal-Mart and other businesses in the area to provide positive mentoring to some local children in need of the experience.

“Loganville Police Chief Mike McHugh is a member of our church and he and our pastor, Russ Butcher, came up with the idea,” said associate pastor Craig Story. “Wal-Mart was our biggest sponsor with $2,500 and other businesses chipped in to get $100 each for about 40 children to go shopping at Wal-Mart with one of our local heroes.”

Story said McDonald’s from Wal-Mart provided the breakfast and the youth and church members from the Church at the Grove as well as the wives of the public safety officials helped serve the breakfast, register the children and wrap the presents once the children had their purchases.

“We had police officers, members of fire departments and EMTs from Loganville, Walton County, Rockdale, Newton and DeKalb counties, the City of Covington, even a DEA agent, take turns taking these children shopping with a $100 gift card,” Story said. “It was awesome.”

The Church at the Grove meets at Youth Middle School and the children selected from Youth elementary and middle schools were children identified by school officials as those who might not usually have good experiences or a positive perception of public safety officials.

“A family’s financial situation was taken into account, but it was mainly children we believed would benefit by having a positive experience with a local hero,” Butcher said. “Many of the fire and police officials from other agencies outside of Loganville who took part either live in the community or attend our church.”

Story said the whole experience was very heart warming. He said some of the children couldn’t even be persuaded to buy one single gift for themselves — choosing instead to spend the $100 on other family members.

“One eighth-grade student just bought gifts for everybody in his family, had them wrapped and walked out of here with the biggest smile on his face,” Story said. “Another little girl asked if she could have the card because there was still money on it, went back into Wal-Mart, purchased a pair of gloves and had them wrapped to hand to the officer who had taken her shopping.”

Story said the hope is to make Shop with a Hero an annual event.

The chief objective was to identify children in need of positive reinforcement in the hope of guiding those who might be conflicted to choose the right path in life.