By Mike Pound

mpound@joplinglobe.com

Folks involved in the giving business tend to live from year to year.

Some years, you figure the giving will come easy. Other years, you figure it will come not so easy. So, given the state of the economy this year, Carl Junction police Chief Delmar Haase wasn’t sure what to expect when the department began mailing out letters seeking help with its annual “Shop with a Cop” program. By the way, that’s pretty much the extent of the department’s outreach for help with the annual gift program for kids: a letter.

“All we do is send out letters,” Delmar said. “We don’t call and bother people.”

I stopped by the Carl Junction Police Department the other day because Delmar wanted to talk about this year’s “Shop with a Cop,” which was held Saturday. Well, mainly what Delmar wanted to do was talk about the folks who made this year’s program possible. Specifically, he wanted to thank them.

Tough times or not, Delmar was happy to report that the 2009 event was the most successful ever.

“I was amazed that even with the economy down, people still responded,” he said. “Some of our donors may have given less this year, but we had more donors.”

Last Saturday, because of those donors, 181 Carl Junction area kids were given a shopping spree of sorts at the Wal-Mart store at 15th Street and Range Line Road.

The department, working with the Carl Junction R-1 School District, identifies kids who maybe could use a little extra something for Christmas. Each kid is given $100 to spend at Wal-Mart. Delmar said that most of the time, the kids have to be gently coaxed into spending the money on themselves.

“A lot of them will want to spend it on a brother or sister or their parents,” Delmar said.

The volunteers who accompany the kids allow them to spend the money any way they choose, but they do make sure that the children spend something on themselves, he said.

Delmar was particularly touched by the support the program received this year because he wasn’t able to devote the same amount of time to it as he has in the past. Around the first of the year, Delmar had some surgery done that kept him off his feet for a while. But his worries about “Shop with a Cop” in his absence proved to be unfounded.

That’s due in large part, he said, to the folks in the Carl Junction Police Department. Delmar singled out dispatch supervisor Jennifer McCall’s organizational skills for making the program a success. He also gave a verbal pat on the back to his entire department, noting that every employee who wasn’t working Saturday showed up at Wal-Mart to help, as did volunteers from just about every law enforcement agency in the area. Of course, that works both ways, Delmar said. His employees can be found helping out at similar Christmas programs sponsored by other police and fire departments. Delmar suspects that guys and gals in the public safety business spend enough time dealing with folks in tough situations that they are more sensitive to their needs. I suspect he’s right.

Of course, the lion’s share of the credit for “Shop with a Cop,” Delmar said, goes to the folks who ponied up the dough. Faculty and staff members with the Carl Junction School District, for example, kicked in $5,000.

“And everyone knows you don’t get rich being a schoolteacher,” he said.

The local legal community also kicked in a generous amount of cash. Delmar said just about every attorney in the area donated to the program, as did the folks at Commerce Bank.

“Really, it’s a community effort,” he said. “Actually, it’s an effort outside of the community too.”

Delmar said it’s impossible for him to list all the folks who helped out this year without leaving somebody out, so he doesn’t want folks to think that the people mentioned in this column were the only ones who helped make “Shop with a Cop” a success. But he also knows that the folks who did help didn’t do it for the recognition. They never do.

Delmar just wanted those folks to know that because of them, 181 kids left the 15th Street Wal-Mart on Saturday with big smiles on their faces.

I think that’s something.