By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

Mack Lyon Beta Club vice president Dayton Wolfley (right) and club member Angelica Rivas-Valle show a few of the toys that were collected at a toy drive at the middle school. The toys were delivered to Cappalappa in time for Christmas for local needy children. Photo by Vernon Robison.

The members of the Mack Lyon Middle School Beta Club delivered over 170 toys to Cappalappa Family Resource Center last couple of weeks for distibution as Christmas presents to needy kids in the community. The toys were collected in a school-wide toy drive that took place over the past week at the school.

“We struggled a little bit with donations for this drive and I don’t think we got as much as in year’s past,” said Crystal Blackwell, Beta Club advisor at Lyon. “But that is most likely just a result of the economy. And in the end, the kids really came through and made the drive a success.”

The toys were brought in by students and collected by Beta Club members each day during second period of the school day.

To give students an added incentive to bring in donations, the club offered an ice cream party to the class with the highest donations. The ice cream party will be going to one of Ms. Crawford’s electives classes and one of Ms. Chappell’s 8th grade classes.

But the class that donated the most toys in the drive actually took themselves out of the running for the party at the very beginning. The six graders decided that they wanted to let the spirit of giving be its own reward. Blackwell said.

“The sixth graders, as a class, actually brought in the most items,” Blackwell said. “But the sixth graders took a vote and decided that they wanted to bring in toy donations just because they wanted to help someone. They wanted it to be just for the holiday spirit. I thought that was kind of cool.”

The toys were delivered to Cappalappa Family Resource Center on Wednesday. Cappalappa administrator Penny Vallone said that the donation would enable the center to help more local families and children through its Adopt-A-Family For Christmas program.