Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry Warren Salvation Army Major Keith Jache (left) will be able to buy more coats for those in need this winter thanks to a donation of $1,500 from Hooktown Holidays presented by Terry Pearson.

Hooktown Holidays is helping to spread some warmth this holiday season.

When Hooktown officials heard the Salvation Army was short on coats for the season, it set out to set things right.

“I heard this and said, ‘How can we make a run at this?'” Terry Pearson said. “We put it on our Facebook.”

In addition to accepting donations via PayPal, Pearson went to some long-standing donors, hoping to get to a total of $1,500.

“Sean Ellsworth at Ed Shults of Warren is a wonderful, generous, individual,” he said.

He went to Ellsworth and made an offer. “If I write a $500 check will you match it?”

It was not a problem.

With that $1,000 and donations adding up to $200 more, Hooktown was closing on its goal.

“I went to Netta at Ekey Florist,” Pearson said.

When she asked how the effort was coming, he told her, “We’re maybe $300 short.”

“Why don’t I write you a check for $300?” she told him.

The Hooktown goal of $1,500 — making a total of $2,000 for the Salvation Army coats when added to the $500 given by the Knights of Columbus – was in hand.

Hooktown officials looked into buying coats.

Instead, they let Major Keith Jache handle the purchasing.

“The Major has a source for purchasing this and gets a better price,” Pearson said. “We’ll write them a check and they can do their thing.”

Pearson presented that check to Jache on Friday.

Hooktown started small.

The Pearsons started setting aside $2 per week to help a neighbor.

They told some people what they were doing and asked if they could do the same.

The program grew. Sometimes, by a little. At other times, by a lot. But every donation is a big one.

Pearson remembers a young girl walking up to a Hooktown table. She asked if Hooktown was involved in the Backpack Program.

Then, she reached into her purse and gave everything she had — $0.13.

The largest donation in terms of dollars was $5,000, Pearson said.

“The strangest donation… was 8,000 pennies,” he said. “The woman said she’d been collecting them for years and years and years.”

That $5,080.13 — and every other penny of every donation to Hooktown — goes to helping the community, Pearson said.

“Every single cent that we get goes back to the people in need in the community,” Pearson said. “We don’t give it to anyone else.”

“There’s a difference between ‘need’ and ‘want,'” he said. “We serve the need, not the want. We don’t touch a thing unless there’s a need.”

The board sometimes targets some needful programs, but they don’t determine where dollars go.

“It’s all about the people that donate to us,” Pearson said. “We do what they want us to do.”

Word is getting out.

“We just need more and more people to know that a charity like this exists in their community and it exists because of them,” Pearson said.

From a couple setting aside $2 a week, Hooktown has grown to be an incorporated 501(c)(3) with a board of directors and a Facebook page, that accepts donations via PayPal, has a warehouse, and has a budget well north of $104 per year.

“At the end of this year we’ll be close to $165,000 that we’ve given away,” Pearson said.

“Alone, we can do so little,” Pearson said quoting Helen Keller. “Together we can do so much.”