Make a Valentine’s card, win a giant stuffed doughnut: CSPD announces contest for kids!

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - Will you be the Colorado Springs Police Department’s Valentine?

Springs police are inviting kiddos ages 3-10 to enter its fourth annual Valentine’s Day card contest!

The rules are simple: make a Valentine’s card for police and drop it off at one of the police stations around town by Feb. 6 for the chance to win a prize.

“We just want some fun, be creative -- glitter, all the glitter possible, because that goes to my chief’s office and all over! So that’s great,” said Sgt. Jason Newton with the Colorado Springs Police Department.

The police chief will then look over all the cards and narrow the pack.

“Our chief will literally lay them out all over his conference room -- so we’ll get glitter everywhere, it’s amazing -- and he’ll pick the top three, sometimes the top five, and then we’ll put them out on our social media page”

From there, the public gets to decide the winner.

“Follow us on our Facebook page and then vote for your favorite, share it, just have fun with it, and then we’ll get to surprise the kids with some special gifts at the end of it,” Newton said.

The contest began back in 2020 when Newton found a gigantic stuffed bear in his new office.

“There was a huge stuffed bear that someone donated, as tall as me, and I’m like, ‘What are we doing with this bear?’ And one of my officers is like, ‘I don’t know.’ And so we’re trying to figure out a way to give it away, we just wanted to have fun with it. I have a young child, and I know how much he loves art, and so we just wanted to find a way to connect with the community, and that’s how we started the contest! So each year, we’ve continued it, and it just keeps growing and getting bigger every year.

“The first year, we had the bear, we actually drove up with a tactical team and had it delivered in our big tactical vehicle, so it was really cool.”

That was followed by a giant fox in 2021, then a huge sloth in 2022. As for this year’s winner -- think sweet, think round, think ...

“Who doesn’t want a giant stuffed doughnut?” Newton joked.

Police want to surprise the winner, so they’re keeping how they plan to do this year’s delivery hush-hush. They ask kids to include their parent or guardian’s name and number with their entry, so that CSPD can contact them if they win and coordinate the gift drop.

“If you love doughnuts, just submit, and we might have some other sweet treats for them that day too!”

Every single card submitted will be given out to police officers and first responders across the city. Newton says all of them mean so much to those who receive them.

“I keep these with me because over the years some of the ones have really touched me and it kind of lifts me up on a dark day, and other officers as well.”

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