Joey’s Toy Drive
A smiling boy holds the handlebars of his new blue bike, surrounded by Joey's Toy Drive volunteers on distribution day

Where the toys go.

Photographs from the season, and the organizations we deliver to.

What it looks like up close.

“We can’t change the world, but we can raise a bunch of toys and put a smile on their faces and make Christmas better.”

Joey Childs, on KTVU, December 2024
A little girl buckled into her car seat, hugging a bright striped stuffed animal on top of a puzzle box
A stuffed animal and a puzzle box, San Jose.

At a Joey’s Toy Drive distribution day in San Jose, families drove up and volunteers filled the car: toys matched to each child’s age, a stuffed animal for the ride home.

A volunteer in a Joey's Toy Drive hoodie loads a wooden railway set into the open trunk of a family's car
A volunteer loads a family’s trunk, one gift at a time.

The gifts that run out first are for teenagers, the kids people stop shopping for at thirteen. Volunteers watch for that gap and buy for it directly, so a fifteen-year-old opens something real too.

November to Toy Day, in photographs.

Boxes go up across the Bay Area. The warehouse fills. Then everything goes back out.

The boxes go up

Two candy-striped Joey's Toy Drive collection boxes beside the prize counter of an arcade
By the prize counter of a South Bay arcade.
Two Joey's Toy Drive collection boxes beneath a software company's glowing lobby sign
A software company's lobby. The box by the front desk fills up.
Four Moraga-Orinda Fire District firefighters standing with two collection boxes in front of a fire engine
Moraga-Orinda Fire District firefighters, boxes between the engines.

The warehouse fills

Warehouse sorting bays stacked with toys, hand-lettered age labels hanging above each bay
Sorting bays in San Jose, labeled by age.
A collection box overflowing with stuffed animals beside aisles of sorted toys
A box of stuffed animals beside the sorted aisles.
A row of new bikes with gift bags on their handlebars, lined up inside the warehouse
Bikes, tagged and lined up for delivery.

The toys go out

The open rear doors of a cargo van packed with two overflowing collection boxes
Loaded for a delivery run.
A shrink-wrapped pallet of boxed toys standing in a warehouse, a forklift behind it
A full pallet, wrapped and ready to move.
Two collection boxes in plaid and candy-stripe wrap, filled past the brim with new toys
Filled past the lids, ready for pickup.
Eleven seconds: a truckload leaves for CityTeam.

Who the toys reach.

Everything collected goes out through organizations that already work with the families who need it.

  • CityTeam logo

    CityTeam

    San Jose and Oakland

  • Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County logo

    Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County

  • Sacred Heart Community Service logo

    Sacred Heart Community Service

    San Jose

  • Archdiocese of San Francisco logo

    Archdiocese of San Francisco

    the annual Christmas Angels event at St. Mary's Cathedral

Most receiving agencies stay unnamed on purpose: naming the place a family gets help can expose the family. This list grows only as each organization agrees to be on it.

Two people give a thumbs-up in front of pallets of boxed toys inside the CityTeam warehouse
Pallets of toys inside the CityTeam warehouse.

December by December.

The years that built the drive.

  1. 2012

    Joey Childs, age 8, turns a school project into a toy collection: handmade flyers, door to door in San Jose. A few dozen toys the first year.

  2. 2015

    ABC7 covers the drive for the first time, the first of four straight Decembers on the news.

    ABC7's first story

  3. 2018

    The 49ers profile Joey Childs as the year's collection passes a thousand toys.

    The 49ers feature

  4. 2022

    The warehouse era. Donated Silicon Valley Moving & Storage trucks, hand sorting, and partner boxes across the Bay Area. KTVU visits mid-season.

    KTVU at the warehouse

  5. 2023

    The drive passes ten thousand toys in a single year for the first time.

    KTVU's season story

  6. 2024

    About 30,000 toys move through the warehouse, and KTVU returns to a drive now reaching across the Bay Area.

    KTVU, December 2024

  7. 2025

    Nearly 40,000 toys. Ambassador drives in Monterey and Santa Barbara send their collections home to San Jose.

  8. 2026

    The next drive is coming together now, partner by partner.

    Host part of it

The numbers.

Every toy is counted by hand at the San Jose warehouse. The figures below are rounded, deliberately on the conservative side.

Tens of thousands of toys,year after year.

~120

partner organizations

13

years of Christmas drives

0

paid staff

2025 brought in nearly 40,000 new toys. 2024, about 30,000.

Host the next one.

Nearly everything in these photographs arrived in a collection box from someone’s workplace, school, or parish.

Host a driveDonate a toy

Or find a donation site near you.