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

Collected here. Delivered here.

The toys get there.

The stories, the photographs, and the organizations the toys reach. Numbers at the end, where they belong.

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
Buckled in, new friend aboard — distribution day in San Jose.

On distribution days, families drive up and volunteers fill the car: toys matched to each child’s age, a stuffed animal for the ride home. It is the shortest part of the season, and the reason for all the rest of it.

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
Stuffed animals wait their turn at the sort.
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.

Delivered to.

Everything collected goes out two ways: family distribution events, and hand-offs to organizations that know their communities best. A few of them, named with their work:

  • 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
Delivery day at CityTeam — pallets in, smiles out.

December by December.

The years that built the drive, and the news coverage that watched it happen.

  1. 2012

    A fourth-grade class project becomes a neighborhood toy collection. Handmade flyers, door to door. A few dozen toys the first year.

  2. 2015

    Local TV notices. 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 the drive as the annual haul 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

    The biggest yet. Toys reach all nine counties, and ambassador drives in Monterey and Santa Barbara send their collections home to San Jose.

  8. 2026

    The next drive opens November 1.

And the numbers, to close.

Counted by hand at one San Jose warehouse. We publish rounded figures on purpose: nothing estimated, nothing inflated.

Tens of thousands of toys,year after year.

9

Bay Area counties served

~120

partner organizations

13

years, 100% volunteer-run

0

paid staff, then and now

For the record: 2025 brought in nearly 40,000 new toys, and 2024 about 30,000. Those are the two years we publish, and both are hand counts.

There’s a place for you in the next one.

The 2026 drive opens November 1. Every toy in that warehouse started with one person deciding it was worth a trip to the store.

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