SCRANTON, Pa. — Pane's Garage on Larch Street in Scranton looks like a toy workshop. Everywhere you look, there are boxes filled to the brim.
"Any toy you could possibly think of, we have it here."
Owner Marc Pane started the Toys for Tots drive 14 years ago after a friend asked if he wanted to get involved.
"Her husband used to do it, and he was a good friend of mine. He had recently passed, and I didn't even know he did it, so we got involved, and it grew from there," said Pane.
Pane says he gets a lot of help from the business community in Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties to collect all of these donations.
"We went from a small truckload, actually a small box of toys, to a truckload, to several truckloads to what we did today,"
Wednesday morning, the group loaded up a tractor-trailer with more than 300 boxes of toys and bikes.
Toys for Tots coordinator Sgt. Jason Dombrosky says these toys will go to kids who live across nine counties.
"Last year, we did 16,000. This year, it is 21,000. Granted, we picked up a few counties, but still, the need is still there in the community, and times are only getting harder. People fall on hard times all of the time, and we are just glad that we are able to help them out," said Sgt. Dombrosky.
"No kid should wake up in the morning and not have a gift, if not several," Pane added.