Benefield: Piner High arranges for special visit from Santa, elves at Monroe Elementary

Sitting in Charlie Seymour’s first-grade class at Monroe Elementary School on Thursday morning, Santa Claus reached into his bag and pulled out a doll.

Natalya Hernandez held the doll for a moment, then politely declined. Eyeing the massive bag at Santa’s side, she indicated she had another gift in mind.

The white-bearded visitor in a red suit reached into the bag a second time and tried again: Slime.

Bingo.

“I like slime,” Hernandez said. “I always dreamed about slime.”

Hernandez was fully stoked on her gift, but meeting the guy in the red suit wasn’t half bad either.

“It was so great,” she said. “I always wanted to meet Santa in my whole life.”

That visit was made possible by Piner High School, whose ASB (shorthand for Associated Student Body) students have a special connection with Claus. Somehow, despite his hectic holiday schedule, leadership students at Piner manage to book an annual visit from Santa at Monroe Elementary.

They’ve made it work for more than two decades. Thursday marked the 22nd year Piner High School students have created a mini-holiday miracle for students at their nearby feeder school.

For weeks, Piner students posted gigantic gift boxes (decorated to look like actual gifts) in classrooms around their campus. Students, teachers and staffers filled the boxes until there was something for every kindergartner through third-grader at Monroe.

If they don’t collect enough gifts they augment the bounty with class funds and go out and buy presents.

“It’s really sweet. I like tear up. It’s really nice seeing the kids being able to get toys they really want,” Piner senior Maria Madrigal said.

And Piner’s generosity? That gets to Madrigal, too. She said the gift boxes in the classrooms filled extremely quickly this year.

“They usually come up really fast,” she said. “Piner loves giving toys to Monroe.”

They do.

“It’s our biggest community outreach of the year,” Piner’s ASB adviser Amanda Park said as elves unloaded toys from the beds of two trucks in Monroe’s parking lot.

For the upper grades, Piner’s toy bonanza included class sets of gifts -- think Whiffle Ball, board games and outdoor play gear.

Last year, deep in the heart of COVID-19 restrictions and distance learning, Piner’s students still found a way to deliver cheer. They loaded up trucks and did drive-thru giveaways.

But for Monroe principal Katheryne Stoural, nothing replaces seeing high school kids walking the halls of her campus visiting rooms and bringing smiles.

“These kinds of moments tie us together,” she said. “I love this cycle of thinking about things beyond yourself.”

Piner’s campaign to bring the holiday spirit to one of its larger feeder schools has coincided almost exactly with Seymour’s teaching career at Monroe.

After Santa and a gaggle of elves spent a good deal of time in his room, calling each student to the front to receive a gift, Seymour pulled the kids’ chains. He reminded them that he has a “no toys from home” rule in his room.

Faces started to drop, until he gleefully told them he was kidding. They were free to open their gifts and have some fun, he said.

The room shook with squeals and peals of laughter.

“Honestly, this is just such a great, great thing for Piner to do,” Seymour said, as his students played with Play Doh, action figures, dolls and race cars throughout the classroom.

“It’s so good for these students.”

It seems pretty good for the Piner kids, too.

Some of them went to Monroe and were on the receiving end of this annual act of generosity. So to reappear as an elf or reindeer takes on special meaning.

Santa, who Thursday bore a striking resemblance Thursday to Piner High senior Andy Wiggins, said popping into Monroe’s classrooms and handing out boxes of slime and packages of cars or action figures was a blast.

“I’ve been doing this for four years. It’s just something really fun to do for these kids,” he said.

“It makes my heart feel so good.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Andy Wiggins’ name. It was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.