GRANT COUNTY — Law enforcement agencies across Grant County will be celebrating Christmas early this week as they buy presents for area kids for their eighth annual Shop With a Cop.

Police departments in Ephrata, Quincy and Soap Lake will be joining with needy kids selected by local school districts and churches at 5:30 p.m. today at the Ephrata Walmart. Meanwhile, the Moses Lake Police Department, along with the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, will gather with local children at 5 p.m. at the Moses Lake Walmart.

The Othello Police Department will hold their own event Saturday, 11 a.m., at the Othello Walmart. After shopping for a few hours with the kids, officers and families will wrap the selected presents for placement under the Christmas tree.

The annual event provides an opportunity for police agencies to connect with their communities and form relationships with children with financial needs. After accruing a list of children from local school districts and churches, the respective agencies take the selected kids, pair them up with an officer, and then ride through the toy aisles of a local department store.

For the families that get the call that their children will get to participate in a year’s event, the impact is significant. When, in 2018, LaDonna Richie received a call one day informing her about the possibility of her 7-year-old son Ocie participating in Shop With a Cop last year, she was floored.

“I was so shocked, mainly because I didn’t even know Shop With a Cop was a thing! I was like ‘how cool is that,’” Richie said with a contagious laugh in the Moses Lake Walmart last December.

Ocie was one of several Moses Lake kids who were paired last year with cops and deputies for Shop With a Cop, and had quite the discussion with Deputy Jake Fisher about which Nerf gun is superior in living room battles.

“Oh, wait,” Ocie told Fisher while browsing through Nerf gun ammo. “I guess then if I get that one then I should get something for my brother too.”

Every year the deputies and officers who participate in Shop With a Cop speak highly of the generosity of the kids who participate in Shop With a Cop. Every year, the kids devote a portion of their holiday shopping spree money to their family members.

“You know a blessing when you see it. This feels like a blessing. We just moved here last February, so I was really hoping, and praying, and not knowing what we were going to do for Christmas this year,” said Richie, who happens to work at the Moses Lake Walmart. “So this is just a major blessing for us. He will be talking non-stop about this for the foreseeable future.”

For the officers involved, the event provides an opportunity to connect, but also simply to put a smile on the faces of a kid in need.

“It’s for the kids and the families,” Fuhr said at last Thursday’s Tip a Cop fundraiser.

“Super fun time,” Jones said of Shop With a Cop.

The annual outing is made possible through various donations and fundraising endeavors throughout the year, like last Thursday’s Tip a Cop at Rock Top Burgers & Brew in Moses Lake, which raised thousands of dollars for the Shop With a Cop cause and involved officers and deputies working the tables at the restaurant and gathering tips.

Emry Dinman can be reached via email at edinman@columbiabasinherald.com.