After missing toys returned, ‘kids will get their Christmas’

Wrapped gifts had fallen from firetruck that pair uses to make holiday deliveries

Santa Claus got his toys back. And some Santa Fe kids are awfully happy about it.

Someone found the wrapped gifts that fell off a firetruck helmed Saturday night by driver Roger Lamoreux and Harold Dixon — who was dressed as Santa Claus. On Tuesday, that person, a woman who Lamoreux declined to identify, returned the packages, saying some relatives found them in the street but didn’t know who to contact.

Lamoreux picked the gifts up from the woman around noon Tuesday. Then he, sans Dixon as Santa, finally delivered the gifts to the family awaiting them on Valle Vista Boulevard.

“I’m so glad we got ’em back and got ’em to the kids,”

said Lamoreux, who owns a 1947 firetruck that he uses to drive Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus into the Plaza every year for the annual tree lighting ceremony.

“The kids will get their Christmas.” Dixon and Lamoreux have been playing Santa Claus and his chauffeur, respectively, for at least 20 years, driving to neighborhood houses to wish families a happy holiday and hand out candy canes. Sometimes, they said, parents approach them with wrapped gifts and ask them to visit the house a few nights before Christmas to give their kids a pre-holiday thrill.

On Saturday, around 8:30 p.m., they were within a block of a home where Angela Trujillo and some dozen neighborhood children were eagerly awaiting a visit from St. Nick in the retro firetruck.

The packages were in the back of the truck. Dixon said he thought they were safely planted, but when the duo turned a corner, the packages likely spilled off and into the street, the two men said.

Within minutes, they retraced their steps but discovered the packages were nowhere in sight. A woman in a nearby car told them she thought she saw some gifts in the road down the street, but then left.

At the time, the duo said they did not want to think that the woman had found the gifts and taken them.

Lamoreux said Tuesday he believes the woman saw a story in The New Mexican on Monday about the missing toys. He bears her no ill will and said he does not believe she meant any harm.

“I think she read the story and said, ‘Here’s the presents,’ ” he said. “There were names on the presents but only first names, so she couldn’t have known who they belonged to.”

On Sunday he said some anonymous Santa Feans had agreed to pay to replace the presents by Christmas Eve. Now, he said, that’s not necessary.

Trujillo said Lamoreux delivered the gifts to her house shortly after noon Tuesday. Her house lit up with Christmas cheer immediately, she said.

“As long as the gifts were returned and somebody gave back a little bit of Christmas, we’re happy,” she said.