Sparkling holiday decorations, joyful Christmas music, the hustle and bustle of cheerful people strolling and enjoying themselves, and best of all, a delicious cup of steaming hot chocolate and a couple of homemade cookies. That should be enough to wrap most residents in the perfect holiday spirit.
Those magical elements all come together on Point Loma’s Garrison Street on Saturday, Dec. 22 from 6 to 9 p.m. Hot chocolate and cookies will be served at 3631 Garrison.
The proceeds from these treats go to a charitable foundation, allowing participants to feel good about their gustatory indulgences. A cup of hot chocolate will go for $1 and a cookie for 50 cents.
Garrison Street has a long tradition as a popular destination for viewing holiday decorations. For decades, hundreds of people have flocked to the neighborhood to enjoy the festive displays. Each year at this time, the neighborhood attracts big tour buses, along with horse-drawn carriages that offer visitors an old-fashioned ride to view the decorations.
Kyle Ybarra, father of one of the hot chocolate girls, says, “I grew up on Del Mar Avenue and I remember my parents taking me over to Garrison to see the Christmas lights back when I was a child.”
Years later, Ybarra moved his own family to Garrison Street, where his daughter, Jessica, helped start the hot chocolate tradition.
For the past eight years, the hot chocolate fund-raiser has been an important part of the holiday tradition.
In 1999, Jessica and three friends, Meghan Zander, Adriana Pickering and Emily Ferdyn, decided to take advantage of the enormous amount of traffic on their holiday-lit street. As enterprising small children will do, the girls ” then ages 5 and 6 ” set up a curbside stand. Since it was winter, they sold hot chocolate instead of lemonade to the many spectators.
Although they set out with the idea of using their earnings to buy things for themselves, the girls changed their minds after hearing about a little Mexican girl who had surgery in San Diego. Generously, the children decided to spend their hot chocolate revenue to buy the sick child a Barbie doll.
That first year, the girls rang up $75 on their little Barbie cash register. Each following year they chose a charity to which they would donate their holiday profits ” organizations like the Red Cross and St. Jude’s Hospital.
This year, the girls are 9th-graders at Point Loma High. As did last year’s hot chocolate proceeds, this year’s will go to Isabella’s Gift, a foundation set up at Rady Children’s Hospital to provide comfort such as cozy pajamas for children with cancer.
Isabella’s Gift honors the memory of Isabella Maria Zouvas, who died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 4. The Zouvas family and the Ybarra family are friends, and Jessica and Isabella used to be playmates. “Isabella was two or three years younger than I was,” Jessica said. “But I remember it was so much fun to be with her.”
Last year, the Garrison Street girls earned $500 for Isabella’s Gift. This year, they have set their goal at $1,000.
“Last year, we earned $500 without putting up any fliers or anything,” said Jessica. “So we thought that if we made signs and fliers and send out lots of e-mails, we’d be able to double that amount.”
Her dad describes the scene as “still the same small table and chairs that the girls rolled out onto the sidewalk eight years ago. Each year a few more lights and decorations seem to get added. But for the most part, it’s still the same traditional ‘lemonade stand’ type of setup that you would see on a neighborhood corner.
We had such a large crowd last year that we may add a second table this year,” he said. “People can expect to see the girls hard at work with big smiles on their faces and the parents zipping back and forth from the kitchen to the stand with fresh pots of hot chocolate.”
For the girls, the rewards are many. They’ve discovered the feeling that they get from making a positive impact on a child’s life. Knowing that the pajamas they buy are going to bring some comfort to a frightened young child entering the hospital for cancer treatment, the opportunity is a great gift for them to give. Doing so in Isabella’s memory makes it that much more important and special to them, they said.
“All of us, the parents, are very proud of them,” says Kyle Ybarra.
“Now that we’re older we understand about helping people,” said Jessica. “It makes us happy when we raise so much money for that. At the end of the evening, we’re sitting on the bed counting the money, amazed that people donated so much money.”
She says many people give more than is charged, telling her, “Hot chocolate costs $1, but I’ll give you $5 for it.”
What Jessica would like people to know is that anyone can do something like this and she urges everyone to try it.
“You don’t need a Christmas street,” she says. “It could be for a small cause but it would still be enough to help people.”
For more information on Isabella’s Gift, visit www.isabellasgift.org.