Donations uplift Cleveland Missing, community

CLEVELAND, Ohio —  A giant truckload of donated items, including food and household goods, is helping lift spirits of Ohio families.

Friday morning a 53-foot trailer packed with 26 pallets of items traveled from Kentucky to Cleveland.

What You Need To Know

• 4 Good Community delivered to Cleveland a trailer truck full of items donated by Amazon Friday
• Families with missing loved ones were invited to select items first, before the community; everything was free for anyone who wanted it
• Volunteers with the U.S. Marshals Service helped unload the 26 pallets of goods

“It’s a day that I feel like everybody from the get-go is just smiling, and they’re happy to be here and they’re happy to be a part of this,” said Anne Murphy, assistant chief with the U.S. Marshals Service.

Volunteers with the U.S. Marshals Service and other local law enforcement officers unloaded hundreds of boxes in the Pivot Center parking lot.

The items were all donated by Amazon and delivered by the non-profit 4 Good Community to help uplift folks in the neighborhood and families of Cleveland Missing. The group travels into communities to give items to anyone who may want them, regardless of financial need.

““It’s fun to see people come through and be like, ‘What?!’” said Cathy Jones, a volunteer who helped organize the event.

About 60 families who have or had a missing loved one were invited to take whatever they want for free first, before the general public selected their items.

The event is intended to help raise awareness about the number of families in the area who have someone missing in need of being found.

“We do a lot with missing children and we recover kids all the time, and that’s one side of what the men and women of the Marshals Service, they do every single day with our Cleveland police partners and so on,” U.S. Marshal of the Northern District of Ohio Pete Elliott said. “But there’s another side to this story and the other side to this story is being able to help those families in need.”

All the items in the parking lot were claimed in about an hour and a half.

“We’re in law enforcement and we have a heart for the community,” said Jones, a retired U.S. Marshal. “Because we do want to make a difference. Unfortunately, a lot of times when we’re in the community it’s not positive, but you can see these guys are here voluntarily.”

Cleveland Missing is a non-profit providing support to families with missing loved ones. Their social media page has photos of people missing and information on how you can help bring them back home.