craigdailypress.com

Craig — Marci Valicenti does not want soldiers fighting overseas or their families to feel alone, like the wars are their burden to carry alone.

For the past seven years, Valicenti and other Steamboat Springs residents have run Support the Troops, a donation and delivery service for American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is run through the Yampa Valley Community Foundation.

The group collects and buys everything from food to hygiene products and games to send to troops during the holiday season. It plans to mail this year’s round of gifts Dec. 1.

“This is not a political statement, whether you approve of why we’re over there or you don’t,” Valicenti said. “We just want to show them that we appreciate their service to our country, hope for their safe return and show them and their families that they’re not the only ones who care.”

The idea for the group was born out of a chance encounter with one of Valicenti’s colleagues in the real estate business, Molly Hibbard.

Around October 2003, Vali­centi was preparing to take her family to ground zero in New York, when she ran into Hibbard, whose son was preparing for his first deployment to Afghanistan.

“I just felt it was really important, not only for me but for my children, to see the devastation,” Valicenti said. “When Molly and I started talking, we decided we needed to do something more.”

For the first few years, Support the Troops had a fair amount of success. It raised $3,000 in each of its first two years and had enough support to send care packages for winter, Memorial Day and July 4.

But now, with the wars dragging on and Hibbard’s son currently on his third tour in Afghanistan, the donations have gotten smaller and the group can only afford to send things at the end of the year.

“I think it’s because of the length of the war,” Valicenti said about the public’s apparently waning interest. “It’s unfortunate that it’s like that, because I think all of us wish we weren’t having to fight.”

The decline in funds has made many of Support the Troops’ chief organizers question how much longer they can keep afloat, Valicenti added.

In the meantime, the stories of the soldiers they have reached keep the group going.

“What we send, we send on quantity,” Valicenti said. “The care boxes are not for one person, it’s for the unit. Some soldiers don’t get care boxes, and just having that, getting something, can make a big difference. Just the joy that a new toothbrush can bring. Sometimes, it’s the simplest things.”