Columbus woman donates Christmas gifts to kids in southern Ohio for 20 years

On most days, you can find Sharon Bonazzo in a store — sometimes haggling over prices as an avid shopper, at others helping customers as an employee, but always hamming it up with just about anyone.

A shopping savante, the Clintonville woman splits shifts working at her local Target and Michaels, just a quick walk from her trailer park neighborhood near the Graceland shopping center. Her employee discounts and thrift savvy have come in handy with her other occupation: Mrs. Claus.

For the past 20 years, the New York native has been buying, wrapping and donating presents for children in southern Ohio through the St. Francis Evangelization Center, a Catholic outreach center in McArthur, Ohio — a village in Vinton County about 73 miles south of Columbus — that hosts an annual Santa's Workshop where local families can shop for donated presents.

Holiday shopping with Sharon Bonazzo

On a chilly morning in early November, Bonazzo, 63, was busy shuttling a dozen laundry hampers filled to the brim with carefully curated gifts for infants and children ages 6-18 outside her home.

"We're onto our fourth truckload this year," she said. "I upped it during the pandemic."

Later that morning, a van from St. Francis stopped by Bonazzo's home to pick up the fourth round of gifts she had prepared since July — anything from winter hats, gloves and scarves to marshmallow pump-action blasters.

"People don't realize when you're poor, you don't have anything," Bonazzo said. "Kids need a little bit of fun and to meet their basic needs, like socks and food."

Bonazzo said she was inspired to start donating to St. Francis back in 2002, when a visiting nun from the center, Sister Linda Lewandowski, spoke at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Columbus, appealing to people to donate to Vinton County, where more than 16% of the population lives in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Part of the draw?

"She was a New Yorker," Bonazzo said.

Lewandowski originally is from Buffalo, New York — a chain-smoking truck driver-turned nun — and her message appealed to Bonazzo, who grew up just north of the Bronx and who attended State University of New York College at Buffalo.

Bonazzo was reminded of her own childhood when Lewandowski spoke in front her Columbus parish all those years ago.

"When I think about when I was a kid, we grew up poor," Bonazzo said. "We got small, trinket-type stuff. It's so extravagant ringing up Target customers buying up to $400 worth of toys for one kid."

'Everything helps': Christmas spirit in giving, not receiving

A week after St. Francis came to pick up the last of the presents Bonazzo assembled, the long-time donor had one final task.

Each year, in addition to the gifts she provides to St. Francis, Bonazzo puts together stocking stuffers for all of the children who receive presents through the outreach center. This year she meticulously organized those stockings in the craft room of the Michaels where she works, filling individual mesh, red gift bags with anything from Nerf disc launchers to art kits.

"Everything helps," she said.

Bonazzo guesses she spends about 40 hours and around $1,000 each year buying and packaging Christmas presents.

Her Michaels coworker Emily Richards, who grew up in the southeast Ohio village of New Straitsville, understands poverty all too well — her own family faced housing insecurity — and Richards is grateful to know someone like Bonazzo contributes to a region that faces so much hardship.

"It's very kind of Sharon," Richards said. "She does a lot of good for a lot of people."

A few days later, after all the stockings were assembled, a van from St. Francis arrived to pick up Bonazzo's final contribution.

Ashley Riegel, operations manager at the center, has been working with Bonazzo for the past nine years and said she is so grateful for the Columbus woman's generosity.

"It's one thing to give out food, but Christmas stuff goes the extra mile," she said.

Bonazzo's donations make up a large portion of the three Santa's Workshops that St. Francis hosts every year. This year, the outreach center put on workshops between Dec. 13 and 14 and helped more than 150 families, Riegel said. The two-day giveaway allows parents and guardians the freedom to shop for gifts for their children.

When Bonazzo started this work 20 years ago, she only donated one or two laundry baskets' worth of toys. Then, a couple of years into the donations, she met a woman from Vinton County who told Bonazzo that she had just inherited five children from relatives who no longer could care for their kids.

When Bonazzo started this work 20 years ago, she only donated one or two laundry baskets' worth of toys. Then, a couple of years into the donations, she met a woman from Vinton County who told Bonazzo that she had just inherited five children from relatives who no longer could care for their kids.

"I knew, right then, that this was not gonna suffice," she said. " So after that I started to step it up."

Céilí Doyle is a Report for America corps member and covers rural issues in Ohio for The Dispatch. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift at https://bit.ly/3fNsGaZ.

You can reach her via email at cdoyle@dispatch.com or follow her on Twitter at @cadoyle18

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus woman wraps Christmas gifts for rural Ohioans over 20 years