‘The most unbelievable thing I’ve ever been involved with’

St. Lucy’s Gift Giveaway, victimized by thievery, proves unstoppable

By Tom Maguire
Associate editor

The team absorbed the heartbreak and got shopping. Christmas was on the line.

A volunteer organizes the children’s clothing section.

The St. Lucy’s Gift Giveaway, going on for at least 20 years, had stored over 1,500 items worth upwards of $15,000 in a warehouse but the inventory was stolen. Giveaway Co-coordinator Kay Scharoun was worried about telling her friends who bought things and never asked for any reimbursement. Would they ever shop for the program again?

“They all said, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll just do what we can now,’” she said. “So I never got a single negative reaction from anybody; it was unbelievable. So it propped me up too.”

It also saved Christmas for 230 families in a 30-block radius of St. Lucy’s on the Near Westside of Syracuse, because “a cast of 1000’s,” according to the St. Lucy’s bulletin, came up with more than 2,000 items and brought them to the St. Lucy’s gym and arranged them and gave them away 9 a.m. to noon Dec. 2.

“It was the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever been involved with,” Scharoun said.

A GoFundMe.com page, she said, produced “calls from everywhere, asking me if I would accept a donation, or people had new items which they wanted to contribute. And it just grew, and it grew and it grew,” said Scharoun, a dedicated community volunteer in the city.

“At the time of the event you just get a sense that you’ve just made people’s day,” she said.

Her co-coordinator is Nick Salibrici, a member of St. Lucy’s parish council and also a singer and guitarist in the parish’s folk band. The feedback from the giveaway, he said, was “mostly that had we not done that they would not have been able to have Christmas.”

“We’re serving families that need a lot of help,” he said, “whether it be the food pantry or the gift giveaway or whatever is happening through the church.”   

He “had probably 15 to 20 people or more who were out spending their own money, buying gifts that we needed.”

Volunteers included kids from Christian Brothers Academy, Westhill, the Syracuse City School District’s Building Men Program, Bishop Ludden and Immaculate Conception and St. Charles. Add all the volunteers from St. Lucy’s and there were more than 100 volunteers, said Salibrici.

“We just had such a show of love and support from folks, and so I think it just showed how strong the community is and how resilient the community is,” Salibrici said.

“We’ve already started shopping for next year,” he said, “so we’re ready to go to keep it alive again.”

Asked what her Christmas message would be to whoever stole the items, Co-Coordinator Scharoun said:

“My answer would be, if you’re a member of this community and you have needs that are so great that you’re tempted to steal, come to us; we have a clothing room, we have a food pantry. There’s probably a way that we could help you through whatever crisis you’re dealing with that would cause you to act in this manner. … Let me help you. Let me help you out of the situation that you feel is so desperate that you have to steal.”

Salibrici’s answer to the same question: “I think I would say, I love you, God bless you and Merry Christmas.”