Naperville schools giving thanks to local moving company for help

Roughly 6,000 Beanie Babies will be hitching a ride to Arizona with Jackson Moving and Storage next week.

Naperville Unit District 203 students and staff recently rustled up their furry friends to send to children in Iraq through U.S. troops on the ground there.

Madison Junior High students even attached notes to their Beanie Babies to show their support for members of our armed forces.

District officials, however, never expected to collect quite so many and found themselves without a way to transport all the toys to the Beanie Baby Ambassador group in Phoenix.

That's when community relations secretary Maureen Dvorak, who has been coordinating the project, contacted one of the district's business partners, Jackson Moving and Storage.

Brad McGuire told her his company has a truck heading south that can cart the 23 boxes of Beanie Babies to Phoenix.

"I was ecstatic," Dvorak said. "You could have heard me in the whole building."

McGuire wasn't the only one to offer his services.

Several district parents and even a woman from Winfield offered cash donations to help pay for shipping and another parent with ties to an airline offered to see if they could be stored in the cargo area of a plane.

"A lot of different people stepped to the plate and said, 'How can I help this happen,'Ȧ" Dvorak said.