One of Santa’s elves has been turned loose in St. Clair County and this elf is helping make Christmas enjoyable for some 156 needy families.

Eleanor Clinkscales just finished providing food baskets for the needy at Thanksgiving.

And she just completed Operation Tricycle where 20 tricycles were given to needy children for Christmas.

Now, Clinkscales is leading the charge to provide food at Christmas for those families in need.

“We distributed these food baskets to all the senior citizen centers throughout the county this past Tuesday,” Clinkscales said. “We will also be distributing food in the town of Riverside with the help of the Rev. Bobby Parker, who is pastor of Riverside Baptist Church. Bro. Phillip Brown is our pastor here at Refuge Baptist Church and he will be helping distribute food baskets to the needy families in this area as well. We are also thankful to Refuge Church for allowing us to use their facility to put these food baskets together.”

Food items that were placed in each basket included a box of vanilla wafers, cake mix, pineapple, macaroni and cheese, green beans, whole white potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, red jell-o, chocolate pudding mix and a ham in each.

“I want to thank Curtis Capps from Royal Foods for providing us with 150 hams,” Clinkscales said. “Mr. Capps is a wonderful man and he has been very good to us. St. Clair County Coroner Dennis Russell provided us with blocks of cheese and we appreciate that.”