Bearing Gifts For 3,000 Children!

With no children of her own to spoil, Dee Drake turned her own sadness around to make Christmas magical for thousands of underprivileged youngsters

- Carole Richardson

When Dee Drake wakes up on Christmas morning, her first thoughts will be for little Luke, Johnnie and Sophie.

Even though she’s never met them nor is ever likely to, she’ll imagine their excited faces as they open the sacks that Santa has so thoughtfully filled and delivered against all the odds.

“It’s such a lovely feeling,” smiles Dee, a 46-year-old IT consultant from Cheshire who, with her husband Chris (44), runs The Toy Appeal to provide Christmas presents for 3,000 underprivileged youngsters who wouldn’t otherwise have any.

“It makes Christmas Day enjoyable and it fills the gap for us…” she says.

The gap Dee is talking about is the the couple’s inability to have children of their own. As the youngest of seven herself, she never imagined her own adult life without a family.

“I thought you worked hard, made your life, got married and had children. I’d be a mum and that would then become my purpose in life. I ’d even chosen names for the son and daughter I’d have – Emma and Thomas…” she says openly.

But after meeting and marrying Chris through work, it was clear by the time she was 35 that she was not going to be a mum. Forced to accept their infertility problems and realising IVF was not an option, they also decided against adoption.

“At the time I suppose I was worried that we would not be accepted as I was 36 by then,” she says.