Salas Team Realty Elves Making Christmas Bright for Killeen, Texas Students

What do the North Pole and Killeen, Texas have in common? Right now, kind-hearted people in both places are wrapping and tagging mountains of gifts to ensure every child has a toy to open this holiday season.

It's a cause near and dear to Shelly Salas' heart. If her name sounds familiar, it's because she's one of Texas' top realtors, but she and her team at Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty also dedicate a lot of time to serving the Central Texas community.

Shelly and her husband both grew up in homes where money was extremely tight, and there were years when Christmas presents just weren't in the budget. Shelly remembers having to make up stories about the great gifts she'd received in order to fit in with the other kids at school.

That's an experience no child should have to go through, and Shelly and her team are determined to make sure they don't.

On Wednesday, Dec. 8, she and over 75 helper elves made up of Salas Team employees, Fort Hood soldiers, and folks who just wanted to help got together at the Killeen Civic and Conference Center to wrap over 1,100 gifts to be delivered to students at Killeen Elementary School.

Gifts will be given to boys and girls from Pre-K through 5th grade. What makes the giving extra special is that each and every gift will be uniquely tagged with the names of individual students. How cool is that? Now every kid will know someone was thinking of them, which makes any gift feel ten times better to receive.

Just like Santa's elves, the Salas Team Toy Shop volunteers made a list and checked it twice to make sure that every single toy was organized by grade, classroom, and kid, which must have taken a ton of legwork. It was really impressive to see in action.

Of course, some gifts were tougher to wrap than others.

Some young volunteers had wrapping skills that put the adults to shame. Must be the small, nimble fingers.

All the work was supervised by the Minister of Cheer, who's a bit fuzzier than your average elf.

This is the fifth year the Salas Team has donated gifts to local students, but this year presented new challenges because of the consolidation of West Ward Elementary into Killeen Elementary.

Shelly wasn't about to let half the kids go without toys, so she and her team whipped up some extra magic this year. The organizational skills were absolutely on point, and gifts were being wrapped quickly, but also lovingly and beautifully.

The toys will be delivered to the happy kiddos on Tuesday, December 14.

Kudos to the Salas Team for wanting to make sure Killeen kids have a merry Christmas, and thanks to all the volunteers who helped make it happen.