Page 30 - December 2015

Santa’s Helping
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
children of fallen/injured officers and reminding the spouses and their kids they will always be part of the police family, Operation Santa allows cops to play Santa, his elves and assorted Santa’s helpers. It enables them to take giving to extremes with no concern for the one-liners that can come from pulling on the elf costume as Lodge 7 member Ed Langle will do once again this year for the Oper- ation.
Chicago Police Memorial Foundation Operation enables cops to give it their all
Operation Santa, the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation’s annual venture to bring holiday cheer and gifts to families of fallen and catastrophically injured officers, had come to a City hospital where a badly burned boy lay in a coma. Retired Area 4 Detective Shirley Wolf and her husband Mike, a retired officer from Des Plaines, prepared to visit the boy and wanted some advice from doc- tors about how to handle the situation.
“The feeling I get from being part of it, how can I describe it?” wonders Langle, who is assigned to the Asset Forfeiture Unit and is 13 years on the job. “It gives you an overwhelming sense of love or appreciation, maybe respect. It’s very difficult to put into words.”
“The doctor told us the theory that even though he’s in a coma, he can hear everything and he has feelings,” Shirley recalled. “He told us to go in and act like we would with any other child.”
Leave it to Santa to put into words.
Since Operation Santa began in 2007, Mike and Shirley have put on their red suits and put on their jolly to play Santa and Mrs. Claus. Except they don’t really play Santa and Mrs. Claus; they are Santa and Mrs. Claus.
“It’s a feeling you can’t get by just writing a check to charity,” Mike Wolf defines. “You really can’t get that feeling being a Police Officer in any other way.”
“So we went in to see him,” Shirley continued, “and he is bandaged from head to toe. We were on the way out and we looked back to see him. And his little arm went up in the air.”
Apparently, that’s the feeling that Chicago Police Memorial Foun- dation (CPMF) Executive Director Phil Cline targeted when conceiv- ing the Op. The Foundation had just started its Mission Beyond The Memorial and was looking for more ways to serve the families of the fallen/injured officers. What better way than bringing Christmas gifts?
It’s OK to wipe the tear away for in the spirit of giving gifts to the
30 CHICAGO LODGE 7 n DECEMBER 2015
Operation Santa