Tree of Hope ensures that children who’ve lost a parent have presents to open for holidays

PITTSBURGH — A local organization is making life a little easier this holiday season for kids growing up without a parent.

Tree of Hope is seeing a record number of children who need help.

Malachi, 2, loves playing with cars and puzzles. He is growing up without his dad.

“I tried to tell him like when it rains, it’s his dad crying because he always asks, ‘Where is daddy at?’” said Mary Farmer, Malachi’s mother.

Malachi’s father, Allen Parker Newton, was one of the city’s homicide victims this year.

Murder rates are spiking in the city, up more than 25 percent year over year.

“It’s hard. I know what to say, but I don’t,” Farmer said.

When the crime scene clears, its young kids who are left behind without a parent.

“They kill women. They kill men. They kill fathers. They kill grandfathers. They kill grandmothers. They have no sense of anything. They’re just indiscriminately and recklessly killing our community,” said Adrienne Young from Tree of Hope.

The nonprofit Tree of Hope tries to fill the gap, helping the families of murder victims by collecting toys for the children.

The holidays are always especially hard, no matter how or why mothers and fathers are lost.

Alexia Thomas just lost the father of her child.

“It’s very hard. We had plans to make gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve. You know wrap gifts build her toys and do what he normally do. It’s heartbreaking,” Thomas said.

“Innocent victims who have lost their mother or their father or a caretaker and they don’t have any other means of support. And they look to us to help them. Let’s have a merry Christmas for those children. They are the innocent victims,” Young said.

The Tree of Hope has been helping families for 23 years, but this year is one of the worst years for violence they have ever seen.

If you would like to make a donation, you can drop an unwrapped toy at the Zone 5 police station or the Eastminster Presbyterian Church on Highland Avenue.

Those toys will be handed out to children next Friday at the Tree of Hope annual party.

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