Wives Behind The Badge Holiday Tree - Lights, Sirens and Holiday Cheer

This week long community tradition consists of decorated, themed holiday trees on display that are sold in live and silent auctions, along with crafts for the kids, live music, entertainment and a holiday boutique. The festival opens with a fashion show featuring designer clothes and continues to end of the week with a festive gala dinner and live auction.  Throughout the week, visitors stroll through out the tent viewing a selection of 37 uniquely decorated trees and visits with Santa.

Wives Behind the Badge became associated with this event this past October with their submission of a police themed tree.  Our goal as an organization is to promote our law enforcement community in the most positive way possible and we felt that this opportunity would provide us the arena to share a fun side to law enforcement as well as give us a forum to spread the word about our organization to the community as a whole.

Tree design and decorating teams submit their plans at the beginning of each year and have the entire year to put their plans in place.  Because WBTB came on board late in the year, this gave us only a little over a month to get our decorations in place and our first task was to find 150-200 police themed ornaments and decorations…not an easy task!  We reached out to police wives and friends across the nation, and asked them to join us by donating the ornaments and decorations. The response was spectacular!  Many of our wives came through with some amazing ornaments.  We also reached out to several local police agencies with requests for donated items to be included with our tree display.  

On the day after Thanksgiving, we showed up bright and early for our first day of decorating.  Soon many of our fellow decorators and designers began stopping by to welcome the rookies and give us tips, which we greatly appreciated.  On our second day of decorating we met a wonderful lady named Florence Tebbets who had finished her tree the first day (it took us three days!). We desperately needed bows for the tree but we were clueless on how to make them. Florence heard that we needed help and came right over to help us and made several bows for our tree. Turns out, Florence teaches bow making at Joanne’s Craft Store!  Not only did we have some amazing bows for our trees but we have made a life-long friend in Florence.

Throughout the three days of decorating, tree designers, decorators and volunteers stopped by our tree to welcome us and give us words of support along with giving our tree rave reviews. One of the volunteers, a nurse at the hospital also happened to be a police wife and we began chatting with her about our organization.  When I had heard that her husband is a detective with the police agency that I had been trying to connect with regarding a donation for the silent auction she immediately stepped up and contacted her husband who called me the next day to offer his help.  Lauran and her husband, Bobby helped facilitate a donation of a 2-hour ride on his agency’s helicopter, which we combined with a 4-hour donated limo ride and dinner.  We are looking forward to getting to know Lauran and Bobby and appreciate their support!

Throughout the week, we visited the festival on several occasions and chatted with many of the visitors stopping by to view the trees. We met many law enforcement officers and their families as well as a few key community donors and business leaders that were very interested in our program.  We are looking forward to developing long-lasting relationships with many of those that stopped by.  Our week ended with the festival’s gala and auction.  Our tree received a winning bid of $1,300 and was awarded as “Most Original”! The local newspaper also stopped by to take a picture and highlighted it on their website. 

It was a wonderful experience and we are very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this special event.  A heartfelt “thank you” to our fellow police wives for donating all of the amazing ornaments and decorations as well as their support and enthusiasm. We could not have done it without you! A special thank you to board members Yvonne Davis and Dave Blitz for their help with decorating, Jacen Davis and Kyle Winick for hanging out with us and providing decorating suggestions, Carolyn Snyder and Peggi Collins of Las Amigas for their invitation to participate in this event as well as their kindness and patience, Florence Tebbets for her beautiful bows, Lauran and Bobby Mitchell and our many sponsors which include:

Torrance Memorial Radiology Oncology Department

Richard and Shirley Winick

Hawthorne Police Department

Sheriffs’ Relief Association of Los Angeles County

Torrance Police Officers’ Association

Los Angeles Police Revolver & Athletic Club

Orange County Peace Officers’ Association

Special thanks to the following police wives and organizations who donated decorations to our tree: