vSANTA continued from page 13 “I found out I knew the mom and I saw her one day,” Terri Thunker said. “She just sobbed, and said, ‘You have no idea how that got the kids and I through.” “He never does it for money,” Terri said. “It’s out of his love for children. He doesn’t do it for hire; it’s just for our friends and family.” But there have been times where Thunker has played the role Santa as a favor, like he did one year, after a woman who saw him as Santa at Monta’s in Yankton called with a request. “She said, ‘We have a coworker friend that is dying of cancer,” Terri Thunker recalled. “She has two girls that aren’t going to get anything, and we’ve collected money. Would you take it to their house? We trust you, we heard you’re respectable.” Thunker called her back and said he’d be happy to help out. Terri Thunker arranged for the woman to be in the car with her, so she could hear right away how everything went.” “The lady gave me an envelope and in the envelope was a little red stocking,” Thunker said. “So I walk into the house, and it looked like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, maybe one bulb in the ceiling fan, one light in the kitchen, no Christmas stuff there. What do you say?” “So I come in and I have a great joy and I said, “Hey, girls, Santa’s elves and their helpers and your mom’s helpers, gave me a gift for you. And they open it —$1,000, 10 $100 bills.” Some years the Thunkers have bought toys for families in need that they found through school or church and surprised them with a visit from Santa carrying a bag of gifts just for them. “We didn’t just put them at the door and leave,” Thunker said. “The plus is that I got to do that with those families.” Dale Thunker estimates that in the weeks leading up to Christmas, he sees 100-200 children every year as Santa, spreading Christmas cheer, telling them about Rudolph and the other reindeer and even having to prove he’s the “real Santa,” but come Christmas, he hangs up the suit and spends that time with his own children. “It’s amazing what people will offer you to come and see their kids at Christmas,” he said. “But that’s a time for me and my kids. In the 41 years that I’ve been doing it, I vowed that (Christmas) is the time when I put the costume away, hang it up and spend time with my own family.” n 14vHISVOICEvNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018