December 2024. We met up with the Indianapolis Fire Department at a Walmart with empty bins and a list of families in our service area who needed something under the tree this year. We left a few hours later with the bins full and the cart line at register seven.
This was the second year we ran a holiday drive with the same crew from IFD. The first one was a Thanksgiving turkey drive. Both lived under the same idea. The people who answer when something goes wrong should also be the people who show up when nothing has gone wrong yet, just because the calendar says it is time to.
All of the toys went to families before Christmas Eve. No press release. No leaderboard. Just bags in trucks, trucks at doors, parents on porches, and a chance for a few kids in our service area to wake up to something with their name on it.
Two angles from the morning. Same parking lot, same partnership, same idea about how we want to show up in the city we work in.
Guardian Angel Restoration is veteran-owned and SDVOSB-certified. The people who built this company come from service. The people we worked the drive with come from service. Different uniforms, same instinct. When something is wrong, you go. When something is right and people still need help, you still go.
The fire department runs into buildings that are on fire. We walk into buildings that just stopped burning. The drive was the rare day where both crews showed up before anything had gone wrong, on purpose, with a cart full of toys instead of hoses or hoses' worth of damage to fix.
Our first run together with the same IFD crew was a Thanksgiving turkey drive earlier in the year. The Christmas toy drive was the follow-on. The pattern is the same one we use for restoration customers. Show up, do the work, come back next time you are needed.
If you are with a Hamilton County or Indianapolis first-responder unit and you want to partner on the next drive, contact us. We will bring the truck.
When we are not at a toy drive, we are at the worst day of someone's year. Here is what we handle when the call is not a happy one.
If you need restoration in Hamilton County or Indianapolis, call us. If you are a first-responder unit looking for a partner on a community drive, reach out.
