Lots of Santas help replace charity's gifts destroyed in blaze

Good-hearted people have come through once again in helping a local charity replace the holiday gifts it lost to smoke damage in a Schaumburg fire last week.

WINGS, which stands for Women In Need Growing Stronger, has received thousands of dollars in donations and gift cards in the last week to replace the damaged Christmas presents.

But only a couple of hectic days remain for WINGS volunteers to shop for new gifts, which will be received between Thursday and Sunday.

The damaged gifts were for victims of domestic violence and their children, for whom Schaumburg-based WINGS provides shelter in the Chicago area.

The fire that damaged the presents occurred not at WINGS' main headquarters but in a nearby office building where the not-for-profit agency was borrowing space to store the presents.

The fire at 1246 Remington Road was reported at 7:35 a.m. Dec. 11. It began in an office unit occupied by Northwest Innovations, but fire investigators were not able to identify the cause.

The unit used by WINGS was affected only by smoke damage, but that was enough to ruin many of the presents inside, WINGS Senior Director of Development Terri Channer said.

The plea for help afterward was answered immediately.

"We got just an overwhelming response from the general public," Channer said. "It's so amazing that you just want to cry at donation after donation."

Most of the donations came from entirely new donors, though many previous volunteers also called to ask what else they could do to help, Channer said.

WINGS was able to recover some plastic-wrapped toys and a fire restoration company will attempt to salvage others. If WINGS has any toys left over after meeting its own needs, they may be sent to a South Side Chicago church that recently had toys stolen from its own Christmas collection, Channer said.