A "New" Toy Story

A "New" Toy Story by Michael Autism Santa Miller
Hello everyone, hope you don't mind a story. As you can see my name is Michael Miller, my alternate ego is "Autism Santa". I started a page on Facebook last July called "Toys AUcross America". My son and I send toys to children on the Autism Spectrum all across the USA just to put a smile on their face if only for a minute, an hour, a day or a lifetime. It all started with a simple post on Facebook in an Autism support group "World of Autism-Making a Positive One". I offered to mail a couple Thomas trains or Disney Cars to a few children of parents of the group. I thought it would be "Cool" for them to get a package in the mail. My son had collected(or I collected still not sure who's obsession it was) a large number of both CARS and Thomas trains. Now that his new obsessions are strictly "electric" poor Thomas and McQueen were wasting away in the boiler room. The response to the post was a little overwhelming and I found myself constantly looking up the post and just going in order mailing cars and trains. Probably a package a day for a couple weeks. Which was supposed to be a package a week, don't tell my wife. I got tired of looking up the post and contacting everyone for their address so I decided to make a toys page. We needed a name. My wife suggested "Toys Around the World". I thought that was fabulous but world was not going to happen for financial reasons, so I changed it to "Toys Across America" then added the "AUcross" to get Autism in the title. AU stands for Autism United btw, found that out later. That way everyone who was interested could come to the page and we could get the info and such. Well it was very popular and we got bombarded the first two months with requests. The only thing we asked for in return was a picture of the child with the gift to display on the page. A lot of the parents wanted to see the smiles we were delivering. Soon my son's toys were gone and my money was gone. We had to do something and luckily crowd funding was just taking off so I made a donations page. Soon we were getting donations from members all over the Autism community. The community as a whole began to rise up around us. I had a frequent saying, "Hey, I'm just a dad mailing trains" because everyone kept praising what we were doing and I guess I was not used to the accolades. Even boxes of toys were sent to us. Two sisters in Ohio had a toy drive at their High School and sent us toys, we had sent one of the girls a Barbie, to the tune of about 75 new toys that arrived at our house shortly before Christmas. We got cars and such from two boys under 7 years old. They gathered up their toys and shipped them to us. We even got financial donations from foreign countries even though we were only doing the USA. We got donations from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, UK and Singapore. So we kept finding children to ship toys too. At first it was in fact "Cool" just to get a package in a child's name. Some of the pictures we received the children had the biggest smiles on their faces and they did not even know what was inside the box. I realized the gift inside was going to have to be just as "cool". So we started asking each parent what their child likes as far as toys go and we try and send the "perfect" gift. Which led to more smiles and more accolades, hey like I said , "I am just a dad mailing trains". To date we have sent over 650 toys/gifts, we have mailed at least 1 toy to all 50 states, a few to Canada and 2 to Puerto Rico. We recently created a second fund the "Toys AUcross America iPad Fund". Every time we raise $350 we are going to purchase an iPad mini and donate it to a child on the spectrum. We have gifted 2 iPads so far and we have the funds to giveaway 2 more. Also I have managed to get a few weighted blankets donated to the page and have been giving them away as well. The stories I have received in return for a small gesture have been extraordinary. From children "talking" when they open their gift, traveling everywhere with it. One boy we sent Yu GI OH cards too joined a Yu Gi Oh club and made a whole group of friends and recently attended a conference, mom gives us all the credit. I have managed to bring a community together or as one mom said a "country" together. This is the story of Toys AUcross America and how I became known as Autism Santa. Or you can read this short poem instead.
A simple offer from a dad.
A toy or two that his son had.
A simple gesture from a son.
To let them go one by one.
A simple smile from a child.
To make this whole thing go wild.
Thanks for Reading.
Sincerely,
Autism Santa AS