Car club collects more than 400 toys

Wendy Alexander/The Madera Tribune

From left, Daniel Gonzales, Saul Rodriguez, Liliana Montoya and Victor Montoya collect and load toys into a trailer during the annual car show and toy drive hosted by Cali Livin Car Club.

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A global pandemic wasn’t going to stop the Cali Livin Car Club from donating to the less fortunate this holiday season.

The car club held its seventh annual toy drive car show on Sunday and brought in about 400 toys, and are still counting.

“This year, the count was lower because we expected more people,” said Michelle Voyles. “But, at the same time, last year, we had a car club donate boxes of Hot Wheels and they counted them individually and that made the count go up to 500. We did pretty good, no doubt.”

“People can still take toys to the mission on behalf of our group,” said Cali Livin Car Club president Craig Voyles. “If they want to contact me for toys, they can. We still have people dropping off toys to me, still.”

Voyles said they had about 80 vehicles entered in the car show held at the Sugar Pine Smokehouse parking lot.

“It was a little low on the entries this year,” Craig said. “Usually, we get over 100 entries. We were expecting a little less with everyone being cautious. We were really surprised with how many people came out, masked up and come out to supporting us. A lot of people came out to help the kids to donate toys.”

Michelle Voyles said that they were still going to hold the event because they wanted to help out as much as they could.

“This is our seventh year doing this,” Michelle said. “A lot of our friends from different areas came to donate. It was great.”

Craig said he was happy to see the turn out and, in turn, is happy to be able to donate to the Madera Rescue Mission to help out the less fortunate.

“It really made us feel good to see the people come out to support,” he said. “They took the time and the effort to help the kids in the community.”

The Cali Livin Car Club donates to the Madera Rescue Mission to make sure their donation helps families in Madera.

“We are the ones that donates locally,” Michelle said. “We wanted to make sure the toys stay local. It feels good to know the toys will go to local children.”

“They (Madera Rescue Mission) have a list of families in need and they distribute them,” Craig said. “With COVID, they are going through the churches to find families in need and distribute the toys that way.”

The Voyles want to make sure to thank the people at Sugar Pine Smokehouse for letting them use their parking lot for the event.

“We were so lucky to do this event,” Craig said. “The day before, they were going to lock down the county, but they moved the time back. Lisa Gill from Sugar Pine Smokehouse gave us the okay that we were good to go. Without Lisa, we wouldn’t have been able to have the event. She gave us the place and the okay to have the event.”

“Usually, we do this at Town and Country Park,” Michelle said. “We were really on the edge of where to have the event. We planned this event all year long. She (Gill) told us she was going to help us. It was great for both of us.”

At the car show, Vale Garcia from Black Widow Impalas Car Club was named Best of Show.

Voyles also wanted to thank Henry Lozano for deejaying the event and also Randy and the Mix, Raw and Crash Boat for their time.