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Santa came early for some Takoma Park residents in the form of Volunteer Fire Department Chief James Jarboe, who handed out presents to area families Dec. 23 for a gift drive hosted by various city organizations.

Every holiday season just before Christmas, Jarboe is busy coordinating with the Takoma Park Police Department and the Takoma Park and North Silver Spring Lion's Clubs to hand out gift packages to needy families as part of the annual Toys for Tots drive.

Jarboe has helped coordinate the drive for all 28 years since it was founded.

"I always enjoy doing this because it's kind of a day you commit to, but it's an effort that we all commit to," Jarboe said of the cooperative event. "It feels good at the end of the day when you get home to know that you helped [these families] have a happy Christmas."

This year, coordinators worked with the Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church of Takoma Park and Casa of Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group, to gather names and numbers of families in need of presents for their children this year and hand out up to 200 gifts at different locations in the city.

The toys were donated by community members and collected at bins at fire and police stations and other locations.

"It's not like other years when you can get your kids at least one present," said Sonia Vasquez, a single mother who lives with her three children in Silver Spring. "You usually give your kids at least one present, they're expecting something and they don't know that you might not have the money."

Vasquez was laid off from her job as a Hazmat handler with a Laurel construction company three weeks ago. She heard about the toy drive through her brother, who also jumped at the opportunity to provide presents for his family this year in a hard economy.

Magaly Benitez, another single mother living in Takoma Park, also picked up a bag of gifts for her four kids.

"This is so wonderful," she said. "I mean, are you serious? It's Christmas, by any means necessary you got to make sure that the kids are happy regardless of what the [economy] is doing."

Benitez, a former accountant, said she has been out of a job for six months, and with the scarcity of jobs in the area, she was worried about providing gifts for her family this year.

Jarboe and other volunteers met at the ezStorage facility at 1352 Holton Lane in Takoma Park at 8 a.m. to sort out toys into numbered bags and coordinate distribution efforts. Takoma Park Police took about 50 toys to hand out to families in their patrol areas that day.

City Councilman Terry Seamens (Ward 4) took another batch of 50 toys to distribute through Adventist Community Services, another organization in the city that helps feed and clothe families throughout the year.

"In the past we've tried to help Jimmy [Jarboe] bag things up and just in little ways, but this is the first time we've done any significant work for them," Seamens said. "They realized that they had excess toys and we had many clients at Adventist Community Services that surpassed our own [stock]."

In previous years, Jarboe said he would dress up as Santa Claus and use one of his department's fire trucks to deliver gifts, but recently he has opted to hand out the packages from a prearranged location because often families would not be home when their gift packages arrived.

Novella Malloy, a former security guard and a single mother of four children, has been on disability leave for four years due to a back injury. She first met Jarboe last year when he delivered toys to her children at the last minute.

"I lucked out to meet him, it was on Christmas morning, he came in and gave me toys so my kids could have a merry Christmas," she said. "My words cannot express my gratitude that they help so many families and their kids."

"I don't know what I would do without them," she said.