LAPLACE — To help during the Christmas season, one local woman is using a pageant, toy and supply drive to help the less fortunate enjoy a better holiday.

Through her years with Louisiana’s Miss Heart of Christmas, Jamie Angotti has collected toys for different organizations. Toys collected for the pageant this year benefit the St. John Parish Young Marine’s Toy Drive.

The pageant is part of the Miss Heart of the U.S. pageant system, and Angotti is the Louisiana director.

“We have more than one pageant a year, but during Christmas we call it Miss Heart of Christmas,” Angotti said. “The other ones are food drives, but during Christmas we do toy drives. We pick a particular beneficiary to help a particular community.”

The pageant is open to anyone female from “0 to 99” that lives in Louisiana. It begins at 10 a.m. Dec. 12 at Celebration Church on U.S. 51 in LaPlace.

Angotti says the pageant is not a glitzy affair, adding it’s more natural. The last day to register is Thursday.

Each girl or woman wishing to participate must bring three unwrapped toys, which will go toward the Young Marines. Along with the toys, the fees collected for the pageant are also being donated. The entry fee is $30, but there are also packages the contestants can purchase for different prices.

“It’s all being donated back into the parish to different charitable organizations,” Angotti said. “Basically, whatever money we have will be distributed through different causes throughout the parish.”

Angotti and her family personally helped out with the Young Marines Toy Drive three years ago.

“This was before I got involved with Miss Heart,” she said. “My daughter was about 10 months at the time. We were just starting to teach her to do good and help others when you are in a fortunate position. My husband and I have always thought you teach by leading through example. We basically gave our daughter $100. We told her we were going to the toy department at Walmart to pick out toys for children and donate them.”

Angotti and her husband went through the store and let their daughter pick out any toys she wanted.

“We went to the toy drive that night,” she said. “We had a big red sack that said Santa’s Gifts, and my daughter presented them with the bag. My husband and I felt so overwhelmingly blessed about how easily she handed over the toys. Not once did she try and keep a toy.”

Angotti said they aren’t looking for any particular types of toys, other than they must be brand new and “something you would be proud to give your child.”

To register, log onto missheartoftheusa.com/christmasla.

Along with helping less fortunate children during the holiday season, Angotti along with her husband John, started Feed and Warm the Homeless Project.

Angotti, her husband and volunteers go to the Mission in New Orleans at 6 a.m. Christmas Eve and hand out food, clothes and other essential to homeless residents standing in line.

Angotti was homeless her self at one point in her life, so the volunteer effort has a special place in her heart.

This year, volunteers bought backpacks and filled them with a coat or blanket, non-perishable food, a hat, socks and hygiene products. At the moment, they are in desperate need of men’s socks and Styrofoam to-go plates with lids. Angotti and others will be serving juice, pancakes, fried potatoes and more.

“I don’t even know how to put it into words what this means to me,” Angotti said. “Unless you walk a mile in someone’s shoes, you will never know how they got where they are . To see 100 or 200 people with tears in their eyes knowing that people cared enough to give up their Christmas Eve with their children to feed them and give them something to keep warm is a heart-wrenching but blessed moment for me.”

This Christmas Eve will be Karissa Carimi’s second year volunteering with the homeless project.

She focuses on collecting hygiene products for the backpacks.

“Honestly, last year I was upset with my kids because they were spoiled,” Carimi said. “I said, ‘Here is where your Christmas money is going.’ Each of them spent $100 of their Christmas money and bought things to be given to the homeless. It was actually such a rewarding feeling for them. I was so happy about it. It’s such a huge success.”

Donations can be dropped of or mailed to 2112 Augusta Drive in LaPlace. For more information or pick up, call 985-212-4453.

Monetary donations can also be sent via PayPal to johncvp@hotmail.com.

— By Raquel Derganz Baker