Santa gave his reindeer a break for a short while to hop on the Santa train with plenty helpers tagging along.
Local men and women of service gave a little extra this Christmas Eve.
Sgt. Austin Garret says, "Just seeing everybody together it kind of gives you the spirit of Christmas, giving back , doing something for the community and kids at christmas time and seeing a smile on their face and light up."
The Forgotten Child fund has been helping bring the spirit of Christmas into homes since 1965.
"We want to give them something wonderful. These children may never have a christmas like this again in their life. We make sure they all get a bicycle, and a lot of toys for once in their lives they know somebody really cares about them.," said organizer Clay Ingle.
This season they provided more than 7,000 local needy children with presents, their highest number ever.
The 10 families most in need get the special visit, each carefully chosen by the fund.
"We check them out, make sure we've never done it before with them, we check them out through United Way 211 system and then we do an interview process, one regular interview then we surprise them where they don't know we're coming and interview them again. We wanna make sure they're really needy," said Ingle.
Civilians load the Carta buses with arranged stockings for any of the children in the neighborhoods.
Ingle said, "Until you ride on the Carta buses and participate in the Santa train, you don't understand just how wonderful this is."
