The Toy Lift Story

During Christmas 1988 Toy Lift Founder, Tom Powell, looked around his house and saw how lucky he and his family were with all the gifts his children had received.  There was a problem though, a number of the gifts has not been opened or had not even been played with.  That got Tom thinking.

What if there was a way that he could help those less fortunate famlies in the area and help provide toys to families during the holdiays?

With this idea in mind, in December of 1989 Tom put himself in a bucket at his gas station on the corner of 29 and Hydraulic road and sat there.  He said he would not come down until he had collected 500 toys to donate to local children for the holidays.

The day went on and around noon, Tom looked down and saw they had collected a fair number of toys!  When he asked for the count, his staff said there were well over 500 toys that had already been collected.  In that moment Tom decided to stay up there until 10pm that night to see if he could collect 1,000 toys!

On and on it went, year after year, Tom putting himself into a bucket truck and staying up in the frigid cold to collect toys for kids for the holidays.

The Toy Lift began to grow and grow and now, over 30 years later, the Toy Lift has become the premier charity event, held on the first Friday of every December!  With multipe collection locations throughout central Virginia and helping thousands of families each and every holiday season!