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Date: 1/31/2023
LUDLOW — In December 2022, Baird Middle School (BMS) sponsored a toy drive as a faculty holiday charity.
Each year, BMS 8th grade math teachers Deborah Ziemba and Suzana Seara pick a charity for the school to donate to and chose Landen’s Toy Drive.
The school-wide effort supported BMS sixth-grader Audrina Palatino, whose brother Landen died due to brain cancer in August 2017.
“We decided this was a worthy cause. Audrina is in 6th grade, and we are a Baird family. We feel that our community is a family and we come together to support our family,” Ziemba added.
The seventh annual Love for Landen Toy Drive, was established to “Honor Landen and bring smiles to those at Children’s CT.”
Landen started this toy drive while he was receiving chemotherapy treatment for brain cancer at Connecticut Children’s Hospital according to his mother, Tina Palatino.
“He loved receiving prizes from the prize closet after each of his procedures, so he came up with the idea to collect toys to help the hospital receive more toys for the kids after each procedure,” Palatino said.
Seara added, “He was an amazing young boy. I was privileged to have met him a few times and he was that special type of kid.”
After Landen passed away in 2017, his sister Audrina and mother started a toy drive for Connecticut Children’s Hospital in his honor.
Around the holidays Palatino drops off the donation boxes at various places in town like car dealerships, dance studios, shopping centers and more.
Ever since the toy drive started seven years ago, the amount of donations received has grown causing the drop-off process to get a little more complicated.
According to Palatino, she used to fill up a couple cars with gifts and drop them off in the lobby at Connecticut Children’s Hospital. Year by year the number of gifts began to almost triple, causing the hospital to say that there were too many cars involved in the drop off process.
Seara further explained, “Now Palatino rents a U-Haul to fill with gifts and deliver them to a warehouse that staff from the children’s hospital sorts through to give to the patients.”
Palatino said, “Each year the toy drive grows larger and larger. It means the world to me that Landen’s memory and love is still alive. To see how many people, companies, schools and organizations work together to collect toys is heartwarming.”
Usually, the charity chosen by Ziemba and Seara are exclusive to the faculty to donate to, but they said they decided to make it “a friendly competition” between each grade and extend it to the students.
Ziemba and Seara reported that over 450 toys and blankets were collected and donated to the children at Connecticut Children’s Hospital from BMS.
“Not all the toys were tiny little things. People donated a wide range of toys but also put packages together that counted as one toy. Some packages included 30 bags with color book, crayons, paint and Play-Doh in each bag,” Seara added.
Palatino said, “I hope to continue this toy drive for years to come and cannot wait to see what it grows into.”