Sydney’s Santa Ride brings gifts and joy to children in the hospital

First responders are teaming up with Santa to surprise kids celebrating Christmas from the hospital. Saint Nick stopped by NCH for the ninth annual Sydney’s Santa ride toy drive event.

Corporal JJ Snyder with the Collier County Sheriff’s Office lost his niece to her battle with cancer.

“My niece, Sydney, had leukemia, and she passed away when she was seven years old,” said Snyder. “While we’re at the hospitals, we noticed that the staff members of the hospital, the nurses and doctors, were always bringing toys in, and we’re like, ‘What is this for?’ And they said, ‘Well, the hospital doesn’t supply us with toys for the kids throughout the year. We pay for them and buy them.’ So that was something that really struck us.”

Snyder says he remembers how hard holidays can be when you’re confined to a hospital room
So for 9 years, to honor her, he’s given the children at NCH a Christmas they’ll never forget.

“We started it and we will never give it up,” said Collier Sheriff Kevin Rambosk. “We do a motorcade. It’s probably three to four miles, and Santa Claus rides in an open car, and all of our vehicles escort Mrs. Claus and him and this year we have Frosty with us.”

“A lot of these families can’t afford the gifts, because they’re paying such exuberant amounts of money for medical care,” said Snyder. “And if they can’t do it, at least they can go to the nursing staff and say, look, we don’t have Christmas gifts this year for our son or daughter. And the nursing staff can say, ‘Hey, look, we do for you and it was donated in a child’s honor that went through the same thing that your child is going through’.”

Seeing the kids light up with all their child-like wonder puts everything into perspective this holiday season. This year they had the most presents by far.