Finger Lakes gamers are winners at gift-giving

In the spirit of giving, patrons of Finger Lakes Gaming & Race Track recently donated holiday gifts to deserving local children currently under the care of the Ontario County Department of Social Services foster care unit.

In the spirit of giving, patrons of Finger Lakes Gaming & Race Track recently donated holiday gifts to deserving local children currently under the care of the Ontario County Department of Social Services foster care unit.

“The gifts went to both foster children and children in the community who would otherwise have had nothing,” explained Irene Akens, foster care supervisor for the Ontario County Department of Social Services. “We have some children who literally have no one to provide gifts for them. We tried to get to them first. This is the happiest time of the year for caseworkers — they were very excited to be able to help provide Christmas for those families that needed it.”

“We had 678 of our (Finger Lakes Gaming & Race Track) guests contribute over 60,000 of their points for this cause,” said Shannon Kingston, marketing specialist at FLGRT.

“That enabled us to purchase over $5,000 in gifts for the local children in need,” Kingston said. “Our guests are truly responsible for making this happen, and we are grateful for their generosity.”

Finger Lakes has been doing this for the last six years. So far they’ve been able to give gifts to over 400 children.

“We usually do about five gifts per child,” said Kingston. “We find out what the ages are and if they’re male or female, and we’ll go shopping for them.”

This year the ages ranged from 1 month to 20 years and all the shopping was done at the Walmart store in Macedon. Kingston said their goal was to find gifts that would engage the kids, such as toys, sports items, card games, board games and other things that will keep them active.

“Mostly we provided the presents to the parents or foster parents so that they could be opened on Christmas morning (as a family),” said Akens. “But in some cases the kids received them firsthand. They were very excited and ran to put the presents under the tree.”

Kingston called this annual effort a “feel-good event” for employees.

“It makes us happy to know that we are helping out children who are less fortunate than we are,” she said. “As we watched the gifts come down the conveyor belt our eyes lit up, just imagining what the children would be thinking as they were opening them.”

In addition to gifts from Finger Lakes Gaming & Race Track, Ontario County Department of Social Services also received gifts through Wegmans’ Toys for Tots drive.

“When these gifts were combined,” Akens said, “well over a hundred children were served this year.”