Chicago Firefighters Deliver Christmas Gifts Meant For Sick Kids At Illinois Masonic
CHICAGO (CBS) -- For the 14th year in a row, Chicago firefighters today brought a delivery of toys meant for children at Illinois Masonic Medical Center for Christmas and the coming months.
About 20 firefighters unloaded a couple of hundred toys and then set them up in a playroom at Illinois Masonic Medical Center. Firefighter Rich Pinskey and crew shop for the toys at Target each year.
"The fire trucks are our favorites," he says. "We go walking down the aisles and hitting all the buttons and all the sirens are going off and people know …oh, the firemen must be back this year. It's that time of the year."
Pinskey says making toy deliveries to hospitals every year never gets old, that it's the firefighters' way of "giving back" to the community.
Illinois Masonic vice-president Robert Zadylak told the firefighters, "You do this every year and it just blows us away to come in to see the gifts and toys you provide."
15-year-old Luis Salinas received some of the gifts while sick in bed. He mustered up a response of, "Decent. It's nice. Yeah."
Four-year old Noe Maya climbed over and rifled through a room full of toys on the pediatric floor at Illinois Masonic. The toys arrived via a sleigh that looked very much like a Chicago Fire Department Mobile Command Post.
Pinskey says the firefighter charity Ignite the Spirit raises money for the toys each year. He estimates the charity spent $10,000 to $13,000 on toys. As for little Noe who picked some Star Wars and Spider Man toys, his mother Sonia says, "It's a nice thing to do. We were not expecting something like this."
Firefighter Rich Pinskey says firefighters will be making toy deliveries throughout the week to Lurie Children's Hospital, Rush University Medical Center and Comer Children's Hospital, as well.