Be a Santa to a Senior Holiday Gift Trees are conveniently located in four Sonoma County Raley's stores.
From now until December 17th, our Be a Santa to a Senior holiday trees will be in four local Sonoma County Raley’s Supermarket stores. The locations are:
1) Raley’s Petaluma, 157 North McDowell Blvd., 94954
2) Raley’s Rohnert Park, 100 Raley’s Town Center, 94928
3) Raley’s Santa Rosa, 1407 Fulton Rd, 95401
4) Raley’s Windsor, 8852 Lakewood Dr., 95492
Home Instead Senior Care of Sonoma County partners with local non-profit and community organizations to identify seniors who might not otherwise receive gifts this holiday season. Raley’s Supermarket has graciously agreed to help facilitate the purchase and distribution of gifts by placing trees and ornaments within four area locations. Each senior’s gift requests are written on a Be a Santa to a Senior tree ornament.
Choose a gift ornament from the tree, buy your gifts, and return ornament and gift to Raley's store manager.
You can help an underserved Senior by simply removing an ornament from the tree, purchasing the gift, bringing the ornament and the gift to participating store’s employee or manager and that’s it! We’ll take care of the rest by wrapping the gift and ensuring that the Senior receives the gift before Christmas.
Touching the Lives of Seniors — The history of the Be a Santa to a Senior program
In 2006, Be a Santa to a Senior volunteers visited a local nursing facility and distributed gifts to a number of residents, including one 87-year-old woman whom we’ll call Mary. She was pleased to receive her gift and thanked us profusely, but it wasn’t until we returned to give Mary another gift in 2007 that we recognized the true value of Be a Santa to a Senior.
When we entered Mary’s room for our second visit, we noticed that the only card on her bulletin board was the Be a Santa to a Senior card from the previous year. As we spoke with her caregivers we found out that our Christmas card and gift were the only items she had received throughout the year. Mary re-read the card regularly to help keep that memory alive.
Each year Home Instead Senior Care® offices throughout North America spread holiday cheer to lonely or financially-challenged seniors through the Be a Santa to a Senior program. This is the sixth year of the program where last year more than 28,000 volunteers distributed gifts to deserving seniors. In the past five years since introducing this Be a Santa to a Senior program, Home Instead Senior Care has helped provide more than one million gifts to 700,000 seniors.
And this year will be no exception, especially with the economic challenges and hardships that many of our Seniors are facing today. Will you join us? Simply stop by one of the local Raley’s listed above to take part in this heartfelt and endearing program. Thank you from the entire team at Home Instead Senior Care of Sonoma County.
Kerry Anderson will be dressed in Elf costume at the annual gift wrapping party.
This year’s wrapping party will be held at Merrill Gardens Assisted Living in Rohnert Park and they will serve as the host along with Home Instead Senior Care. Julie Ann Anderson, Home Instead Sonoma owner and her marketing director, Lana Fennell, will facilitate the event with the Merrill Gardens staff, along with Julie’s daugher Kerry and her friend Jenny. Refreshments including hot cider and hot cocoa will be served.
For more information about the Be a Santa to a Senior program, please contact your Sonoma County Home Instead Senior Care office at 707.586.1516. For locations in other cities, please visit the Home Instead sponsored website. We sincerely appreciate our partners in this year’s Be a Santa to a Senior program — Raley’s Supermarkets and Merrill Gardens!
