On Saturday, December 12 my parents and I finally finished tying donation tags on 1800 bears that we will be delivering to Rady Children’s Hospital on Friday, December 18.
What started out as a small fundraiser in August to raise enough money to buy 250 teddy bears for kids in the hospital for Christmas, exploded into a gigantic success! 27 very large bags and five boxes later, I never imagined it would have turned out this well.
There are so many people to thank for helping me make this possible.
- My parents, Don and Nancy O’Neill, for EVERYTHING they do to always help me.
- Catherine Garcia of KNSD TV in San Diego, California who interviewed me for their news the week of Thanksgiving. Because of the interview, MSN picked up my story and donations started flooding in from around the world.
- Every person who donated money to help buy bears. From $5 – $500, every dollar received was used to buy bears. Including my own donation, the grand total received was $5,130 which bought 1800 bears. A complete list of generous supporters can be found on my Pencil Bugs website.
- Lisa Vinton and Darcy Jones of Only2Degrees in Temecula, California who made a few calls and found several people willing to donate a truck so that we could deliver the bears to the hospital.
- Rachel Mason of Hemet Hospice in Hemet, California who donated their organization’s truck, driver, and time. Rachel was so excited to be a part of my Christmas project that she is even coming with us on delivery day.
One of the most fun parts for me was opening up box after box to see what type of bears we received. We ordered an assortment of bears which made it interesting. Each box was a surprise but the biggest surprise was when I opened a couple of the last dozen boxes. We didn’t expect to receive Santa bears but we got about two dozen assorted Santas. Then to top it off, there were three large yellow bears that looked a lot like Winnie the Pooh so I’m sure three kids will be very surprised and happy when they receive those bears.
After we had finished with the first two shipments of bears (1100 total) and had tied donation tags on each one, Mom put together a short video with highlights. Stay tuned for the video update after the big delivery.
Then the week before Thanksgiving, my project exploded! 
Once everything was calculated, the grand total was 1800 bears. So that our entire garage wasn’t completely filled with teddy bears all at once, we ordered 1000 bears. 40 large boxes arrived on Wednesday by UPS. I think our UPS driver was more than a little surprised when he got the order to deliver to our house. He actually called ahead of time to make sure someone would be home which Mom and Dad appreciated. I was excused from a school field trip on Thursday so I could start unpacking, sorting, counting, and tagging the 1000 bears that arrived.
Tying donation tags on each one went a lot faster than we had expected. Being organized ahead of time by printing the tags, punching holes in them, cutting pieces of yarn to tie them onto the bears, and even stringing them really helped the whole process. Of course Mom and Dad helped a lot. Otherwise, I would still be tying on tags instead of writing this blog.
Thank you again to everyone who donated and supported my project. Our coordinator at Rady was amazed when we called to tell her we had a few more than our original plan of 250. All she could say was “WOW”!