Turn Halloween candy into treats for troops and veterans

Halloween's tomorrow, of course. So, you know, kids are about to be drowning in candy. If you want to do something good with the extra, Soldiers Angels can take it off your hands. Amy Palmer, the CEO, is here now to tell us how it all works. Amy, thanks so much for being here. Hi, thanks for having me today. Of course. Tell us more about Treats for Troops. Sure. Treats for Troops is our Halloween candy buyback program. It is an opportunity for people in the community that want to collect candy at their locations. So we have dentists, orthodontists, gyms, all sorts of businesses that service collection sites. So they can collect excess candy that was returned. If kids get too much candy, they want to drop it off. Sometimes those businesses offer prices and incentives for the children who participate in the program. But also people that just bought too much Or buy it after the holiday is over, can drop it in those locations. And donate it back to Soldiers Angels. I love that, very clear why dentists love it so much. It's not just one box, I understand, going overseas. What does it look like when it lands in a VA hospital or on a base? Yeah, the candy really makes a big difference to lift morale, not just for those overseas, but veterans of the VA that are going in for their appointments or picking up prescriptions. It's really nice to get something there. We also send a lot to active duty installations as well, guard and reservists that are stationed and even deployed in stateside locations for disaster relief, border protection, all those sorts of things. So to be out in the field and get a little piece of candy just really makes a big difference. And sometimes it's not, Not just the candy, but just knowing somebody cares enough to give you something really makes a difference to people. Yeah, small token like that goes a big way. And I know you would know firsthand as well because you served in the Air Force yourself. I know you took over Soldiers Angels in 2013. Were you ever a lucky recipient of one of these boxes? Yes, I was a recipient of boxes when I was actually stationed in Korea. I was on a remote tour location and received quite a few boxes. You know, I came from a large family. My parents couldn't afford to send boxes to me, and so I received them from other organizations. And getting candy, especially things you don't get year-round, milk duds and some of those things that you're not used to seeing on a regular basis, but you get the bite-sized one really is really great. Yeah, I was going to ask, what was the one thing that you were hoping or you hoped was in the box? Would you say milk duds, anything else? Milk duds and hot tamales. Those are the two that we fought over all the time, because a lot of times you don't think to get them year-round. You would like a Snickers bar, you know, you see on the shelves. You don't often see those, especially the small packages of them. So to get them in those boxes is really a special treat. A lady after my own heart. I love me a hot tamale, a red hot and a milk dud. How many pounds did you guys collect last year? We collected almost 100,000 pounds, just under 99 and some change last year. Right now, we're at about 74,000 pounds pledged this year from collection sites, but we're about 42,000 pounds short of fulfilling all the requests that we've received from VAs, from deployed service members, and from military installations. So we have some work to do. Okay. I think we'll get there. We'll get there, though. Say someone watching right now, they want to be a drop-off place, and the deadline is tomorrow night, I understand. What does a business or school need to do to be ready to register? Yes, they can go to our website at soldiersangels.org. And there's some information, there are a lot of information about registering, but they fill out a basic form and it'll ask them if they want to be registered as a public collection site or private. And so people that are retail that are trying to get people into their store and familiar with their location can be on the map where people can search by zip code and find them. But we have a lot of folks that want to be just internal employees, HOAs that want just residents of their community to be Okay, and people, that's the deadline to be a place for people to drop off. But people have until the end of November, right, to drop off the candy. Yeah, so once people, once they go to our website, starting on the first and put in their zip code, it'll show all the collection sites within a radius of them and they can indicate what that mileage radius is. And it'll actually tell you the dates and times that those facilities are taking those collections. So some collect a few days, some collect the entire month, some may collect towards even 30 to 60 days. It really depends on the site, but all those details are available when they go to that zip code search on our website. And the candy will be going to various places. Just list off some of them before we let you go. Yeah, so we'll send it to about 100 VA medical centers and VA medical clinics around the country. We'll send them to about 17 different deployed locations and Guard and Reserve facilities all over the country. We do a lot that are out for border patrols all over, particularly Texas, California, those states that do a lot of border security. Right now, of course, with flooding in some markets, we'll have some for disaster relief. But there's a lot of really great locations. We're supporting inactive duty installations as well. Well, SoldiersAngels.org is the website to go to, folks, for all this information. Amy, thank you so much for your service. And as the son of a naval officer, thank you for what you're doing as well for our service members. Thank you for having me. Have a great holiday. You too. You too.