‘One way that we can help’: Group delivers Christmas gifts for kids of fallen officers

It’s been about a decade since Paul Maxwell embarked on a mission to help ease the pain for families of fallen police officers.

Maxwell, executive director of Angel Charitable Corporation, created the nonprofit Swing For Their Kids to raise money to buy Christmas gifts for the sons and daughters 18 and under of every police officer killed in the line of duty in Nevada within the last 10 years. The organization spends $1,000 on presents for each of the kids, he said.

‘We’ve got to do something for these families’

Maxwell said the nonprofit grew out of a desire to help the families of fallen Metropolitan Police Department officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo in 2014.

The idea to help their families through Christmas came to him while he was attending a family Thanksgiving dinner in Long Island, New York.

“I don’t know why, I just started thinking about the (Beck’s and Soldo’s) families,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, can you imagine this is their first Thanksgiving without them?’ and how bad that would be. Then I was like, ‘Oh, man, Christmas is coming. We’ve got to do something for these families.”

Maxwell said he approached Theodore “Ted” Schaefer, a retired Metro officer and Maxwell’s neighbor at the time, and called MaryLou Crocker, who worked for Metro police, to assist Beck’s and Soldo’s families after the officers’ deaths.

Crocker recalled getting the call from Maxwell.

“He’s like, ‘I got your phone number. I heard you’re the contact person for the families,’ and like he did with Ted said, ‘This is what I want to do,’” she said. “This was just after Thanksgiving, and he wanted to do it for Christmas that year, that quick. And in my head I’m thinking, ‘We’re never going to get a golf tournament together that fast, but you know what, let’s do it.’”

To her surprise, Crocker said, Maxwell and Schaefer pulled together a golf tournament that first year, and she coordinated with the officers’ wives to get their children’s Christmas wish lists. With the money raised from the golf tournament, they were able to buy the gifts and deliver them on Christmas Eve.

‘Make Santa Claus come true’

Money raised from this year’s tournament, which took place Dec. 2 at WildHorse Golf Course, will go toward buying presents for the children of 10 fallen police officers. Presents will be delivered to 18 children in Northern Nevada and Southern Nevada.

“Our mission is really to make Santa Claus come true for the families of our fallen Nevada police officers that were killed in the line of duty,” Maxwell said.

Getting the gifts to their young recipients requires a little stealth, he acknowledged. Maxwell said he and other organization members, including Crocker, Schaefer, John Raspopovich, with the help of key sponsor Pat Ledbetter, drop off the gifts at the families’ homes on Christmas Eve after the children have gone to bed.

“The fun part is, I have the wives’ contacts and I let them know, ‘Hey, let me know what time the kids go to bed,’ Because to them, it’s still Santa,” Crocker said. “So the kids go to bed, and we very quietly sneak them into the house after.”

Maxwell said he spends around $1,000 to have the gifts professionally wrapped with large bows on each present “so they actually look like it’s coming from like the North Pole.”

‘Just one way that we can help’

“You have an officer’s family who has one less parent, and the other parent has to pick up all the slack,” Schaefer said. “That’s kind of what we try to help do is kind of alleviate that burden from them. They’re already going through a lot of pain and suffering emotionally. It’s just one way that we can help.”

Contact Mark Credico at mcredico@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Instagram @writermark2.