ROCKINGHAM — Around Christmas time, Shop With a Deputy takes full swing as local officials meet children at Walmart to give them a holiday they’ll never forget. This year, Deputy Antonio Young introduced a Shop With a Deputy Basketball Tournament at the Richmond County Senior High School gym to help raise more funds for the program.
“It normally comes out of our pockets because the kids want to buy toys, but the parents want socks, underwear, t-shirts and so forth. The sheriff allowed me to present this as an opportunity to raise money to help with that cost. I thought that was a really beautiful thing that he allowed me to do,” said Deputy Young.
Despite being organized quickly, the event still found its way onto the calendar during the busy Labor Day weekend.
“This is our first time ever trying this. It was kind of a little short timing and then it’s Labor Day weekend, but we still pushed forward in trying to see if we can get this started,” said Young.
Young’s inspiration for the tournament comes from his love of children and his memories of programs that shaped his own childhood.
“What inspired me is that I love kids. A lot of the deputies, we do SRO [School Resource Officer] on our off-days with the kids. I’m that guy that I talk to everybody — I’m a talker. The fact that I mingle with a lot kids, the kids come up to me and talk to me, I just thought, ‘man, it would be a cool thing if we could help them out more.’ And not only that, but bridge the gap with the community. I’m from Florida and I remember growing up that we had the PAL [Police Athletic League] Program and the DARE [Drug Abuse Resistance Education] program. In my community back home in Florida, we mingled with the cops because they always had events going on in our neighborhood and I just thought that was the coolest thing.”
His own experiences motivated him to bring similar opportunities to Richmond County.
“So growing up, I always wanted to be a cop. So now that I’m up here in North Carolina, those childhood memories — I’m just kind of reflecting on like ‘man, that was cool when I was growing up. Let’s see if we can do something like that here,’” said Young.
For Young, the tournament is about more than raising money. He hopes it will create a safe environment where children feel comfortable sharing their accomplishments and building positive relationships with deputies.
“I hope that they take away the advantage of the fact that we’re here to help them. That when we show up, they can talk to us if they have any issues. I will say, one of the main goals is that we don’t want to just talk to the kids when they’re doing their worst moments. We want to try to create memories, those good moments. That way, even when they’re doing good—they got A’s and B’s in school, or they made the team, they come up to us and share those moments with us. That way, we can kind of bridge the gap between us and the kids and the community saying ‘okay, we’re there for you,’” said Young.
Sheriff Mark Gulledge expressed his gratitude for the community members who came out to support the event and emphasized that fundraising efforts will continue.
“We appreciate everyone that’s come out to participate with us today. We will continue to have fundraisers between now and the day of the event, Shop With a Deputy that will be at Walmart this year for the Richmond County School system,” Gulledge said.