August 12th, 2015
Santa Claus(es) scheduled for early visit to local children impacted by flood

FROM STAFF REPORTS

A small army of Santa Clauses will distribute toys to Hays County children on Saturday as part of a nonprofit group’s unique disaster relief program.

The Lone Star Santas Convoy of Toys will greet families, pose for photos and hand out gifts to kids between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Aug. 15 at Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, 211 Lee Street, and at the Wimberley Community Center, 14068 Ranch Road 12.

The group estimates it will bring along 15,000 new toys for children affected by natural disasters.

Children “are usually the ones in the community that are kind of pushed to the back [following a natural disaster] because everybody’s looking for food and water and clothing. The children have lost everything in a lot of cases,” organizer Susan Portwood said earlier this year during the convoy’s visit to tornado-flattened Van in northeastern Texas.

Since its formal organization in 2009, Cypress-based Lone Star Santas Charities Inc. has brought early Christmas to children in Joplin, Mo. and Moore, Okla. following tornadoes; in Bastrop and Magnolia following wildfires; and in West following a fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people in 2013.

The event in Wimberley is by Barnabas Connection, a Wimberley-based nonprofit that will hold its annual Back-to-School Fiesta between 9 a.m. to noon Aug. 15 at Wimberley United Methodist Church, 1200 County Rd 1492. The Santas will be hosted in San Marcos by Community Action Inc. of Central Texas.

Go there

Lone Star Santas visit San Marcos
When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15
Where [1]: Centro Hispano de San Marcos, 211 Lee St.

Lone Star Santas visit Wimberley
When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15
Where [2]: Wimberley Community Center, 14068 Ranch Road 12

COVER: Image of Santa Claus and kid. STOCK PHOTO.

CORRECTION AND CLARIFICATION 12:45 p.m. AUG. 14: An earlier version of this story should have said Central Texas Community Action Inc. is hosting the Lone Star Santas in San Marcos, not San Marcos and Wimberley. Also, the story was updated to clarify that the Barnabas Connection’s school supply distribution program will be held at different times and a different location than the Wimberley toy distribution.