Chapman High School’s Family, Career and Community Leaders of America club and Family and Consumer Science students began their annual holiday “free shopping” event Tuesday afternoon at the school.
“We’ve been doing this about 20 years,” said FCCLA sponsor and FACS teacher Sonya Anders.
“It’s our way of giving back to the community,” said Raegan Potter, a CHS senior. She has been involved since she was a freshman.
This year’s donations for the free shopping weighed 4,821 pounds of all sorts of items. “This has been a good year” for donations, Anders said. Donations usually weigh in at 3,000 pounds or so, she added, except after the tornado in 2008 when “we got more than 5,000 pounds.”
Students, school clubs and members of the community donated the items that filled rows of tables and hung on racks in the school’s mult-purpose room. Besides the nearly 15 members of the FCCLA, the school’s FFA, Future Business Leaders of America, Hi-Y, AFG (All For Girls), SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) and cheer groups brought in clothes, CDs, housewares, tablewares, holiday decorations, toys, books and clothes. One table even had two bottles of barbecue sauce.
The doors to the multi-purpose room opened at 1:15 p.m. By 2 p.m. “lots of people” had already been shopping, said Shelby Hettenbach, another FCCLA member.
“The coats and kitchen stuff” was going fast, Hettenbach and Potter agreed. “The Christmas stuff — decorations, knick-knacks and presents” were also going quickly, Potter added.
The free shopping will continue to be available from 1:15 to 6 p.m. today and Thursday.
Shoppers can enter the high school through the front doors and proceed to the right and then left down the hall to the multi-purpose room.