Thousands of Central Florida families receive Angel Tree gifts

ORLANDO, Fla. – Thousands of families will be able to celebrate Christmas as gifts donated by the Central Florida community made their way to homes on Thursday.

Distribution day is here, and 6,000 gifts went out to families stopping by the Joy Center.

This year, 5,000 angels represent a child ranging from infant to 14 years old in Orange and Osceola counties. The other 1,000 angels are seniors who might not have a Christmas if it were not for Angel Tree donations.

Ahead of distribution day, $239,605 was raised on Giving Tuesday during a News 6 phone bank for the program. This amount includes a donation from News 6′s partners at Light Orlando. The group’s $100,000 donation was made during News 6′s 7 p.m. newscast.

Volunteers have been working for days and weeks to make sure everything is good to go for distribution day.

It takes a lot of special volunteers to help deliver gifts at the Joy Center.

For Jim Dorman, it was his 12th year working at the Joy Center.

He brought many of his colleagues from Dorman Financial Management.

“It’s giving back to the community helping the families in need, and Salvation Army has a need for volunteers, so here we are,” he said.

“We get there the best job of anybody,” said Elizabeth Myers of Humana. “They did all the hard work of organizing the families to collect the gifts, organizing the gifts, and packing the gifts -- but we are the ones that actually get to give the gifts, and so it’s a lot of fun.”

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