Christmas is just five days away, but that didn’t stop Santa Claus from making a special trip to Carrollton to visit residents with intellectual disabilities at the Mosaic vocational center.
Santa’s visit was part of Texas Motor Speedway’s holiday edition of its Speeding To Help community outreach initiative that provided the Mosaic residents with a special Christmas luncheon party at the organization’s local headquarters.
More than a dozen volunteers representing Texas Motor Speedway and Levy Restaurants, the speedway’s official concessionaire, provided a holiday spread complete with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls and Christmas cookies to more nearly 60 adult residents.
Following lunch, Santa arrived and handed out candy canes and hugs for the residents. He also joined in playing bingo with the group and handed out special Texas Motor Speedway prizes to the winners.
Volunteers also helped residents get in the holiday spirit by singing Christmas carols while residents of the bell choir performed.
“Christmas time is a very special time of year, especially for the people that we support,” Mosaic Employment Support Coordinator Nicole Foluso said. “When people come in and show they care and that they come in and interact, it means so much. Some of the people we serve don’t have families that come in and spend time with them. It’s been a blessing.”
The visit concluded the 2016 edition of Texas Motor Speedway’s Speeding To Help program.
Just last week Texas Motor Speedway kicked off the program by hosting the Lacy family from Haslet after hearing their story on the nationally syndicated Kidd Kraddick Morning Show on 106.1 KISS FM.
Logan and Katie Lacy have three children – eight-year-old Landen, four-year-old Jase and nine-month-old John Luke – and recently found out that their youngest has a birth defect known as craniosynostosis. It is a condition in which one or more of the fibrous sutures in an infant’s skull prematurely fuses by turning into bone, thereby changing the growth pattern of the skull and resulting in the need for extensive surgery.
The speedway heard on the show that the family was a fan of NASCAR, so TMS invited them out for pace car rides, Victory Lane photos and a special visit from Santa with NASCAR and speedway gift items.
What started as an opportunity for Texas Motor Speedway staff to help the North Texas community has grown into a program that just concluded its ninth year and has impacted thousands. Speeding To Help has provided assistance to 30 organizations or programs throughout the various counties in North Texas as well as the West, Texas Long-Term Recovery Project.
Those organizations are the 6 Stones Mission Network; Austin Street Center; Butler Branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Fort Worth; Camp Summit; Catholic Charities Fort Worth; Children’s Medical Center in Dallas; Christian Community Action; Clara Love Elementary School; Community Powered Revitalization; Dallas Arboretum; Dallas Life Homeless Shelter; Dallas Zoo; Denton County Friends of the Family; Feed The Children; Fort Worth Parks and Recreation; Homes For Our Troops; Humane Society of North Texas; Mission Arlington; North Texas Food Bank; Northwest Independent School District; Ronald McDonald House of Fort Worth; Rosemont 6th Grade School of Fort Worth; Tarrant Area Food Bank; The Salvation Army (twice); Trinity Habitat for Humanity (twice); United Community Centers, Inc. of Fort Worth; United Methodist Committee on Relief rebuilding project for Granbury, Texas; United Service Organization (USO) of Dallas/Fort Worth; Volunteers of America, Texas and West (Texas) Long-Term Recovery Project.
TMS PR
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