Naperville cops deliver 'Sweet Cases' to kids in foster care
Detectives, dispatchers and other police employees formed an assembly line this week in Naperville, filling big black duffel bags with all manner of ordinary things - bedding, toiletries, school supplies and socks.
The collection of run-of-the-mill stuff turns into something comforting and personal when it's all put together, a donation to a child in foster care called a Sweet Case.
Naperville Detective Kate Koziol, whose works with juveniles sometime includes foster kids, organized a drive late last year to collect money and supplies to create the Sweet Cases.
On Friday - $2,778.27 and 204 duffel bags later - she exceeded her goal of delivering 86 Sweet Cases to young people under the care of a Naperville nonprofit organization called Our Children's Homestead.
"We're able to help out more than we originally thought," she said.
Koziol and several co-workers spent an hour Thursday afternoon stuffing the large, plain duffel bags with all the essentials: a pillow, pillowcase, fleece blanket, toothpaste, toothbrush, socks, pencils, pens, a highlighter, a notebook, a folder and a pad of paper.
Of the 204 bags, Koziol said 117 were complete Sweet Cases with all the items, while the others were donated even if they were missing a few things. She also passed along extra hairbrushes, toothbrushes and school supplies beyond what was needed for the Sweet Cases.
Naperville spokeswoman Kelley Munch said it took longer to load the cases into vans bound for Our Children's Homestead than to fill them with all of the donated items the community gave in an outpouring of support that Koziol called surprising.
The end result was a treat for kids in foster care - belongings of their own, which the detective dropped off Friday morning.
"We're able to give them each something new rather than the usual hand-down goods," Koziol said.
The Sweet Cases came from a California nonprofit organization called Together We Rise, which provides the duffel bags to groups who fill and deliver them to improve the lives of children in foster care.
Last year, the nonprofit oversaw the donation of roughly 48,000 cases to children across the country.
In Naperville, the cases are likely to go to teens or young adults, as 90 of the 138 people Our Children's Homestead serves are between 14 and 21, said Jacqueline Stogsdill, director of community relations and development.