Christmas is a busy time of year for Lisa Pappa. The West Windsor resident and mother of five has gifts to buy, cookies to bake, and a Christmas dinner to plan. And then there’s the small matter of the 120 neatly wrapped gifts piled in her living room.
Those presents are not for her kids, extended family, or anyone she has ever met. Rather, each gift represents a wish granted for a foster child in Mercer County. They are the fruits of Pappa’s wish tree.
Pappa’s is not the only wish tree in town — other locations include MarketFair and the West Windsor Library — but it is one of the more successful. West Windsor and Plainsboro girl scouts decorate the trees with hand-made ornaments, each of which lists one foster child’s holiday wish: a toy truck for a five-year-old boy, an Old Navy gift card for a 13-year-old girl, a winter onesie for a six-month-old. Anyone can take an ornament, purchase and wrap the gift, and turn it in for delivery to the child in need.
The more than 300 requests come from the Division of Family and Children’s Services, and their distribution is coordinated by the Princeton Area Women’s Club. Though Pappa is not a member of the club, she has created her own wish tree for more than a dozen years. Working with girl scouts, she would set up the decorated tree on her back porch. “We’d tag each ornament with a gift request, and then I’d have a sign-up book next to the tree and people would take an ornament and sign up,” Pappa explains.
This year, for the first time, Pappa’s wish tree went virtual. “People still came looking for ornaments this year,” Pappa says, but she was able to achieve broader participation through E-mail outreach.
“At first we just had 100 gift requests, and probably 70 or 80 of them were gone in less than a week,” Pappa says. “People were disappointed that there was such a limited amount left in the second week, so I had to go back for more.” The 120 gifts collected this year marked a 20 percent increase over last year’s total.
“People look and see what their own financial ability is in their selection,” she says. “People give whatever they can. It’s very heartwarming.”
In addition to those who purchase the gifts, Pappa gets help from kids in the community looking for volunteer opportunities in conjunction with girl scouts, bar and bat mitzvah preparation, and the like. “I probably have had at least seven different kids help, gather the presents, and reconcile them with the original list. It just ties a knot on it that they help me, and it helps them for the hours they need.”
Donors drop gifts at her house throughout December, with a final push coming at her annual cookie exchange, which took place the weekend of December 14 and 15. East Windsor-based Harris Moving & Storage then donates its services to transport the gifts to DFCS for distribution. The gifts go to children from newborn to age 17, and range from gift cards and video games to bicycles, toys, and, in some cases, items for a pregnant teenager’s future child.
Pappa’s desire to help foster children specifically was rooted in her own experience as a foster parent. She has lived in West Windsor for 22 years. Her four sons all graduated from High School South, and her daughter is now a senior. Her husband, Vinnie Ingato, works in finance. Two of her sons have attended the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, California, and hope to start their own restaurant one day. Another son is in law school, and the fourth is in college.
Her introduction to foster care came when her own relative became part of the system. “My nephew, who is somewhat troubled, had three children, and his third child was in foster care,” Pappa explains. “I got very upset and wanted to see what I could do to help. As an aunt I could take him in, but I had to become fully certified — as was our house and my husband.”
That child ended up living with his grandmother, but “after we were all set up we said we might as well try,” Pappa says.
For a time they had a five-year-old boy who came from an abusive situation. “He went to a wonderful situation with his grandmother,” Pappa says.
Then, she says, they had a heroin-addicted baby for 13 months. “We had her from the hospital and had her for her first steps, first words. Now she’s at a mommy-and-me rehab program in Newark,” Pappa says. “That was a less than positive experience. She wasn’t able to leave the hospital for two months because she was severely addicted and had some other things she’d contracted from her mom.”
The ordeal was emotionally draining, and for now Pappa is on a break from foster care. “I’m sure we’ll go back and do it again,” she says. “My whole family gets really involved.”
Beyond foster care, Pappa has also long been involved with her children’s schools. For 10 years she was in charge of the talent show at Grover Middle School, where she helped write the scripts for the student emcees. Since her daughter was a freshman she has worked on fundraising and planning for South’s post-prom celebration.
Work with children runs in Pappa’s family. She grew up in southern New Jersey, where her father was the head of guidance at Oak Crest High School in Mays Landing and her mother was an elementary school nurse in Mullica Township. As a child, she would sing carols and deliver gifts to a local halfway house with her church’s youth group.
Now Pappa’s family has its own Christmas traditions. In addition to baking for the cookie exchange, which she has hosted for the past 20 years, the family attends Christmas mass at St. James Church in Pennington and cooks Christmas dinner for the extended family. Her present from her kids, she adds, is having their picture taken with Santa Claus, “although each year they threaten that this is the last year.”
While her kids may outgrow Santa’s lap, and the wish tree has outgrown her back porch, Lisa Pappa’s desire to help children in need is going strong, and she is already looking forward to next Christmas. To participate, E-mail lisaswishtree@gmail.com.
