Wrangell’s Police Department is hosting its first annual Christmas card competition.
Interested 5 to 11-year-olds can submit a hand-drawn Christmas card design on a 5 inches by 8 inches piece of paper to the Wrangell Police Department.
Police Chief Gene Meek brought this tradition with him from when he worked at the Soldotna Police Department.
“We will take their little submission and turn it into our Christmas card for the year and we will mail that out to other police agencies,” he said.
Meek said everybody who gets a Christmas card from Wrangell PD will have the young winner’s drawing attached.
“I always like getting a plaque, putting the Christmas card on the plaque, putting their name and age up there and putting it in our lobby so that everybody can see who the winner was that year,” he said. “Then to make it even more incentivized, I’ll pull $100 out of my own pocket and give them a $100 bill for winning the competition.”
Meek said when he did it in Soldotna, it was wonderful to see all the different cards that came in.
“I want to bring that here just to have that engagement and have kids really get into submitting these cards that maybe representative of our police department,” he said.
As for the judges on the panel, he said it will probably be himself and two supervisors at the police department. But if they have family or friends that submit, they may have to skew who the judges will be.
Keeping it anonymous as possible for judges
Meek requests that the name, age and school grade be written on the back of each submission. That way, the judges won’t know who drew what.
“I don’t want to know whose card it is and who it’s from until we start getting down to which ones are going to likely be our finalist,” he said.
The deadline to submit the Christmas cards to the Wrangell Police Department Dispatch Center is November 27.
Meek said that will give them enough time to get the cards printed and returned in time for Christmas.
