Operation MOMS Cookies Sends Holiday Cheer to the Troops

It started a decade ago as a labor of love for mom Debbie Trippiedi.

In 2001, her son was stationed overseas with the U.S. Army. To boost his morale, Trippiedi began sending him care packages that included, among other things, homemade cookies.

The goodies from home were a hit with the troops.

“In April of 2002, he sent us an email and said, ‘I love you so much and thank you.’ He said he was constantly sharing [the care packages] with everyone else,” Trippiedi said. “Here’s a 21-year-old saying, ‘Half of my soldiers don’t have families and friends and don’t get care packages.”

Trippiedi and her friends set out to change that, baking large batches of cookies and boxing them up to be sent overseas.

“Before long, you’d get someone coming up to you and saying, ‘Oh, can you send my grandson some cookies?'” she recalled. “Every one one of these sons and daughters are America’s sons and daughters. How do you say no?”

The effort was the beginning of Operation MOMS (Men and Women of Military Services) Cookies, which today sends an average of 12,000 care packages (dubbed  to soldiers stationed overseas each year.

The Wilmington-based non-profit, which also provides assistance to military families that are struggling to make ends meet, doesn’t just send cookies. Care packages include healthy snacks like nuts and provisions tailored to the part of the world where troops are stationed — like cups with built-in water filters for servicemen and women stationed in desert areas.

For Christmas, Girl Scout troops in Plainfield put together Santa bags containing treats like candy bars and hot chocolate packets and, more importantly, messages of cheer for the troops, Trippiedi said.

“[Most people don’t] realize how far that simple token goes when they’re far away from home,” she explained. “It means so, so much.”

Trippiedi said the last of the Christmas boxes — complete with mini Christmas trees — were shipped this week. But Operation MOMS Cookies sends cheer to troops year round: Next up will be the “Hearts for Our Heroes” shipment in January and February 2013, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

The efforts are made possible by corporate sponsors like UPS, which this year helped the organization send care packages to military bases throughout the U.S. at an 82 percent discount.

Girl Scouts of America donated more than 400 boxes of cookies to the organization this year, Trippiedi added.

MOMS Cookies is also getting support from area businesses.

Plainfield resident Barbara FitzPatrick said her employer, Enterprise Recovery Systems in Oak Brook, is helping the cause.

“We pay $4 a day to wear jeans,” she said. In exchange, the company matches employee contributions.

So far, Trippiedi said, the company has contributed more than $2,500.

How to help

With shopping costs at more than $16 per box — and due to go up after Jan. 1, 2013 — monetary donations help the non-profit continue its mission.

Donations can be made on the Operation MOMS Cookies website; instructions for sending donations via mail are also available on the website.

An evolving mission

With the war in Iraq over and the drawdown in Afghanistan, Trippiedi said Operation MOMS Cookies will expand its mission to offer more assistance to returning servicemen and women.

“Our mission must encompass the men and women who are coming home,” she said. “Their needs have to be addressed now,” Trippiedi added, saying many returning heroes face economic challenges as they struggle to find work, along with battling post-traumatic stress disorder as they try to readjust to civilian life.

“They need advocates here at home,” Trippiedi said, adding MOMS Cookies members are working on ways to help.

“This past year, we were also reaching out more to veterans,” she said. “What an honor an a privilege to hand a box to a World War II vet on an honor flight. I’m always at a loss for words — it goes much deeper than appreciation.”

For more information on Operation MOMS Cookies, visit www.momscookies.org or click on the organization’s Facebook page.