Among the eager parents gathered Thursday outside a warehouse on Shipman Drive, hoping for a gift to bring home to their children, Deborah Thomas thought of her son Daniel.
Thomas has had plenty of hard times, starting with losing her son, months after he returned from Iraq in 2008.
Cpl. Daniel J. LaBella took his own life and was laid to rest a week later, on the day the Marines were due to promote him, his mother said.
On Thursday, she thought of him while hauling a plastic bag full of Christmas gifts from the Marine Corps Reserve's Toys for Tots program to an old, faded Chevrolet S-10 Blazer.
“I've donated the last three years and gave nearly $1,000 in my son's memory to Toys for Tots,” she said. “He was very active in Toys for Tots, and this year my husband got laid off two weeks before Thanksgiving.”
With Christmas around the corner, Thomas' thoughts turned to her 12-year-old son, Jacob. She, with hundreds of people, many of them women with young children, patiently waited for a gift that might brighten the holidays. And they waited a long time.
Michelle Williams, an unemployed retail worker who drove the Blazer from Canyon Lake, had been with Thomas since 9:30 a.m. Standing next to the truck, borrowed from a friend because her car won't start, she opened a garbage bag to find two stuffed animals, a binder used for school and a children's book.
“I think she's going to like them, even though it's not some of the stuff she has asked for,” Williams said of her 11-year-old daughter, Isis.
The lines on Thursday were as long as in 2011, and the need as great or greater, organizers said.