Oakdale Man Helps Foster Relationships Between Police and Kids Through Annual Shopping Event

As a community organizer in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood 11 years ago, Oakdale resident Arnie Curiel remembers brainstorming with then-St. Paul police Cmdr. John Harrington about how they might build positive relationships between police officers and the kids in the community.

So often, if the children did have contact with police, it would be a sign of trouble, he said, maybe due to a domestic assault situation or a crime.

They came up with Shop with Cops, a program through which police officers would take at-risk kids holiday shopping. On a December Saturday each year, officers—mainly from the St. Paul Police Department—go with one or two children each to the Midway Target store to help them shop for presents for their family members they can purchase with donated money. Then they eat pizza and wrap presents together, Curiel said.

“We want to show that these officers are more than just people responding to the area to deal with bad things,” he said.

The program has grown from serving about 20 kids in 2000 to about 220 kids last year, he said. They get funding from community donors, businesses and Target, he said.

Curiel was honored recently as a 2012 Eleven Who Care outstanding volunteer, and will be featured on KARE 11 later this year for his work.

Now a professor in St. Scholastica’s graduate teacher licensure program, Curiel still manages the operations of Shop With Cops as a volunteer, coordinating with school districts and the police officers, said fellow volunteer Jeff Gardner, a Summit-University neighborhood businessman who’s in charge of fundraising for the program.

“I see the love and the care and the work that he puts into this program,” Gardner said, “and I know he’s very passionate about what he does, and he knows it does good.”

Curiel grew up in Frogtown. He’s the son of migrant farm workers who moved to the Twin Cities for factory jobs, he said.

After leaving college to work with another nonprofit organization, Curiel ended up back in Frogtown working for a “weed and seed” program—a program that aims to clear out crime and support human services—from 1999 to 2005.

“I really wanted to change the neighborhood so it didn’t get viewed as that neighborhood where crime was,” he said, “and that the kids in that neighborhood would be proud of where they came from.”

While Curiel said he’ll always think of Frogtown as home, he’s now part of the Oakdale community. At last year’s Shop with Cops, Curiel arranged for an Oakdale police officer to participate and shop with the Oakdale children who returned home last September to find their parents and babysitter dead in a murder-suicide.

“These kids came home to an unfortunate situation, and that was the interaction they had with a police officer,” he said.

Curiel also volunteers locally as an Oakdale Athletic Association coach, he said. He is married with three kids, ages 13, 11 and 9, and he’s coached soccer, basketball and baseball, he said.

In addition to volunteering and working, he’s starting on his dissertation at Hamline University to get his education doctorate. He was also a candidate for the school board in 2010.

Sometimes balancing work, school, family and volunteering can get overwhelming, he said, but he doesn’t see Shop with Cops as a duty, but rather something he wants to do.

“This year, at one point I saw the reaction on the kids’ faces as they’re shopping and enjoying themselves,” he said. “It puts everything into perspective and it keeps me grounded.”