Meet Chavez’s Sock Santa


This year is Cesar Chavez High School’s second annual Merry Sockmas. It is an event where students donate as many socks as they can to the school, and the school then donates the socks to local shelters for the homeless. 2019 Sockmas started off strong. On only the fifth day of the event Chavez already had over $100 worth of socks donated and one kid was responsible for $100 of socks. What started as someone just wanting to get a bit of extra credit in his business skills class turned into so much more for the entire community.

Mr. Areida is often in charge of the school’s different drives the past few years. We discussed if he thought this year would out do last year’s Sockmas and he immediately responded that he was sure that it would because of the massive first week donation in Mr. Frey’s class.

Last year when Mr. Areida went to the St. Mary’s Dining Hall to donate clothes that students of Chavez gave, the reaction of the people was beautiful. “They were crying from pure happiness.” The leadership teacher exclaimed as he finished explaining, “They could not believe that our students took this upon themselves to do for the community.”

Jesus G. Herrera is a freshman at Cesar Chavez High School during this year’s Sockmas and he is the student that donated over $100 worth of socks. The family is known for helping and donating to charities during the holiday seasons and this year Jesus asked his family to consider something different for their charitable deeds. He asked his mother to pay $50 as well as his dad another $50 for his schools Merry Sockmas event. Mr. Frey told us that he was extremely happy and surprised when Jesus came in with all the socks. “He looked like a Sockmas Santa carrying all the socks into class in a large black bag.”

Jesus’s donation started out as a way to get some extra credit for his first period. His donation soon turned into a lot more though, because his donation will be helping a lot of people in need. He told us that him and his family gave a lot of thought to this donation. There were different types of socks: warm ones, regular ones, insulated ones, and even diabetic socks. He told us that he’s really happy to be helping people who are in need. Especially since socks are the number one need for the homeless after shelter. Jesus’s donation could be considered a Christmas miracle to the people receiving the socks, if more people put that much effort and generosity into helping others, imagine what our community could be.