Baldwin man’s den transformed into a festive toy wonderland

Andrew Rifkin, of Baldwin, has been working alongside Long Island’s Toys of Tots for eight years, but he was nervous that this year’s donations for the holidays were coming up a bit short.

Rifkin said he was in “panic mode” because the number of toys collected fell shy of the number of donations in past years. However, he had received a lot more monetary donations from Venmo and PayPal this year, and with the more than $2,000 that he received, Rifkin, along with his wife, Robin, and daughter, Allison, shopped till they dropped.

“We shopped on Black Friday at Kohl’s and brought four or five shopping carts with us in and out of the store,” Rifkin said.

Action figures and scooters were just some of the nearly 500 toys that Rifkin dropped off at Nassau Coliseum on Dec. 3.

And he received little cooperation from Mother Nature. The drop-off, which is usually a social event, was not as social this year because of the rain, and Rifkin and the other donors didn’t stick around.

“It is usually a big social event, but this year it was not,” Rifkin said. “I was part of an entourage of four vehicles.”

All of the toys that Rifkin collected were from family, friends and people he met on Facebook. One person gave him about nine boxes worth of action figures.

“My guess for the total number of toys is somewhere between 400 and 500,” Rifkin said.

Rifkin attached a 6-by-12-foot trail to his truck, and he still had toys filled up to his chest. He brought along his wife and daughter to unload his truck, and they took the gifts out of the truck and handed it to the next volunteer, until all the toys were dropped off.

When he was shopping for toys, Rifkin said he saw a brand of scooters that came with helmets and bought 15 scooters. Rifkin said that shopping was a lot of fun and was his favorite part of this year’s Toys for Tots.

“I literally filled my den with all the toys that I collected,” Rifkin said. “It’s definitely a blast and a lot of fun.”

Every day when Rifkin would arrive at his home in Baldwin, he would see a box waiting for him at the front door, as people kept buying toys from his Amazon wish list. The toy pile kept getting bigger and bigger, to the point where Rifkin had to strategically place the toys in his car.

“We did a good job organizing the box shapes so that it was more stackable,” Rifkin said. “When we loaded the truck, we tried to take advantage of every square inch. We call this ‘Toy Tetris.’”

According to Rifkin, about 9.4 million toys were collected nationwide for Toys for Tots. Rifkin added that the charitable organization has been “gaining momentum” over the past couple of years.

“It’s a great event, and hopefully next year the weather is better,” Rifkin said. “However, the bad weather doesn’t stop us. It has rained more than once on the drop-off date before.”

Rifkin added that all the donors are like postal workers because they endure all sorts of weather.

Next year, Rifkin said he would carry on the tradition, asking for donations and starting the gift-buying process in September.