News : Koop\'s Auto Toy Drive will help Horizons families

Ben Mills sits at his desk at Koop's Automotive, near toys donated by customers.

Customers quickly filled this box with gifts for area families at Koop's.

Koop's Auto has begun a toy drive to help the families served by the Horizons service.

"Family Support and Early Access Supervisor Lori Hagg for Horizons has been a good loyal customer of ours for years and she recently purchased another vehicle," said sales manager Ben Mills. "We started talking about what she does and how she helps families in need and she mentioned that they distribute toys to kids of all ages at Christmas time so they have something to look forward to and open on Christmas.

"Jeremy and all of us at Koop's can relate to this type of situation growing up, and he's always wanted to do something like this, but didn't really know how to distribute the toys. So we teamed up with Lori and Horizons to solve that problem and help bring more gifts to their existing program.

The business announced the toy drive.

"As you can tell by the pictures, our customers and this community are absolutely awesome and wasted no time gathering toys," says Mills. "We are collecting new, unwrapped gifts until Saturday, Dec. 20 at noon.

Lori will pick up the gifts, all of which will go to Benton County families.

"We've had a bunch of people go shopping with their children so they can help pick out a gift and donate it so they are aware of families that are less fortunate than them. We snapped pictures of a few of them and shared it on Facebook," Mills said. "It seems to be contagious. It's really neat to see people we know and people we don't know participating and Jeremy keeps reminding everyone that every single toy will make a big difference on Christmas for some kid somewhere. This is our first year; we plan on making it an annual event, and we are all really excited about it."