Parents crowded into Utah Valley University’s Wasatch campus on Tuesday and Wednesday to shop for Christmas gifts at Operation Hope — the Christian Center of Park City’s annual toy and coat drive. 

Park City residents and neighbors Jazmin and Dulce have attended the event since moving to the area 17 years ago. The women said the event has been a consistent source of support for their families during the holidays. 

“It’s a big help in these difficult times,” Dulce said. “We’re truly so grateful every year they help us by providing gifts for the children. It brings the kids so much happiness to have a gift of their own.” 

The event felt especially meaningful for Jazmin this year, coinciding with her son’s 17th birthday and giving her the chance to pick out a gift for him to open that day.

Operation Hope allows families to choose three gifts per child, along with a stocking stuffer, as they move through the event. The selection includes a wide range of items, from toys and winter clothing to books and other essentials. There was also a gift-wrapping station where participants could prepare their presents on-site. 

Jaime Carter, the Christian Center’s special events manager, has been involved with Operation Hope since 2021. Over the last two years, she has played a central role in coordinating and leading the effort.

The program only operated in Park City for several years, but expanded into Heber roughly six or seven years ago. In more recent years, Carter said the Christian Center has run separate distribution events in each community.

However, two standalone events began to feel disconnected. So, the Christian Center combined them at a single location this season. Operation Hope served Wasatch County families on Tuesday and Summit County families on Wednesday.

“In the past, it was feeling a little disjointed, like, ‘Oh, it’s a Heber event and then a Park City event,’ but we want it to feel like a Christian Center, Operation Hope event,” Carter said. 

Consolidating into one location also solved a few practical challenges. 

“There are some logistical things that make sense, too. We don’t have to set up and tear down twice, which is beautiful for me,” she joked.

Beyond convenience, the decision was driven by a desire to create a single event that brings all families together. Carter explained the Christian Center’s other major program, Back to School Basics, takes place in Park City, requiring Wasatch County families to make the commute each year. 

Hosting Operation Hope in Heber City offered a balance to the organization’s programming, while also making it a practical choice based on the number of people who signed up.

The Christian Center focuses on providing humanitarian resources to both Summit and Wasatch counties. Carter said the nonprofit serves a larger number of families overall from the Heber Valley area, with participation typically outpacing the Park City event by a substantial margin. Wasatch County had 120 more families registered than Summit County this year, and almost 300 kids between those families.

The structure of Operation Hope has stayed consistent, but community support has expanded significantly over the years.

“The model remains the same, but I think every year we get more efficient, and the community members get behind it more,” Carter said. “This year we’ve seen traction in both counties like we’ve never seen before.”

Each year has brought more efficiency and more enthusiasm, too.

This season, the Christian Center has seen an unprecedented level of engagement from Summit and Wasatch counties. Local businesses have also stepped up to host donation drop boxes, and more volunteers than ever signed up to help.

The Santa Pub Crawl down Park City’s Main Street has also supported Operation Hope for more than a decade. Organizers said that tradition continued in a big way this year.

The Park City Christian Center’s Director of Programs, Eli Shackelford, said bars participating in the crawl helped rally patrons and staff into generating such a large volume of high-quality donations that an entire box truck was filled.

Meanwhile, other businesses like Midway’s Folklore Bookshop joined the effort for the first time. Folklore donated hundreds of books for the event, which organizers said was a major boost to the gift selection. Folklore hopes to expand its contribution next season by providing an estimated 1,500 books or more — one book per child.

Carter said she believes the momentum comes from increased awareness and dedication of an “all-star” group of volunteers who helped with planning and community outreach. Operation Hope reaches a different level of impact when excitement spreads organically through neighbors, not just from staff at the Christian Center.

Lori Mattioli volunteered as a personal shopper for the sixth consecutive year since moving to Park City from Washington, D.C. She walked through with registered families and helped them pick gifts.

One of Mattioli’s favorite aspects of the toy drive is the parents’ role.

“The point is, the parents get to choose. They know their kids,” Mattioli said. “They don’t come from an institution. It’s under the tree from mom and dad.”

The 2025 drive also saw involvement from Wasatch High School Latinos In Action, which provides leadership and service opportunities to students. 

Stephanie Quintana, 16, has been involved in the club for four years. This was Quintana’s first year volunteering at Operation Hope, wrapping gifts with fellow Latinos in Action members. 

“I had to wrap a soccer ball. An inflated one,” high school student Diana Barrios laughed. The wrapping station had run out of gift bags by that point.

Shackelford was enthusiastic about the number of donations received this year, explaining that it may be the first time the Christian Center doesn’t run out of toys. Some volunteers in past years had to leave halfway through the event to purchase additional items, which were not always as high-quality as donated toys. 

Over the years, the Christian Center has built a relationship with toy manufacturers that allows the nonprofit to purchase a full pallet of toys for roughly a third of the normal cost. Shackelford said one of the most impactful ways to support the effort is for a group to come together to sponsor a pallet, enabling the team to secure a shipment that stretches each dollar much further.

Business and volunteer involvement were just as vital in organizing the Wasatch Community Foundation’s annual food drive, which served Wasatch County families on Tuesday.

Families were given one bag of food per child from a moving truck full of them. This year, there were 1,200 bags with a total estimated value of $90,000.

Organizer Diann Glenn said each bag weighed about 18 pounds and was valued at about $75. The food came from a variety of sources, including purchases by the Foundation, community donations and contributions from local businesses. 

This year’s food drive donors included Heber Valley Artisan Cheese and the Market at Midway, which provided the bulk of cheese and grape jelly, respectively. Each bag included an assortment of food items such as tortillas, popcorn, hot chocolate mix, cereal, peanut butter, as well as cans of soup, beans and fruit. 

The food drive tradition has been going on for over a decade. The goal is to help Wasatch County families during the two-week winter break, when children don’t have access to school lunch and breakfast programs. 

Glenn said the only stressful part of the food drive is the anxiety that donations won’t be sufficient to feed everyone, but she’s learned not to worry too much about that. This year brought in about 24,000 pounds of food, with nearly 4,000 pounds of leftovers. Leftover food was donated to the Christian Center of Park City’s food pantry.

In her five years of organizing the food drive, Glenn has never seen a greater need than now.

“In years past, a lot of families, they’ll say they have five children. And we’re like, ‘Well, here’s five bags.’ They would say, ‘No, I’ll only take three. Let someone else have the others.’ But this year, no one turned them down. People were really in need of the food,” she said. “The cost of everything has gone up so much. … It’s expensive to live.”

Lifelong Heber City resident and stay-at-home mother, Nikki Jones, spoke to that. 

Jones last came to Operation Hope two years ago. This year, she came to shop for her 15-year-old daughter and 9- and 7-year-old sons. Jones’ teenage daughter was easily the hardest to shop for, but she was able to land on makeup, a Starbucks gift card, a jacket and a hammock. 

“It was a little easier because they were younger,” she said.

Jones said her family has been in Heber City for generations, when there was “just the one red light on Main Street.” However, it’s becoming expensive in the community.

“My cousins are all gone. It’s just kind of pushed everybody out,” she said. “It’s not the tight-knit farm town anymore.”

Beyond Operation Hope, the Christian Center also runs its basic needs assistance program throughout the year. The program serves everyone in Summit or Wasatch counties, providing aid with rent, gas and utilities, as well as connecting families with additional resources at other community nonprofits. The program operates with minimal paperwork, aiming to ensure that no one is turned away. Shackelford estimated the program had already assisted 115 clients in December.

For more information, visit ccofpc.org.

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