Sacramento's Council of Seniors and Senior Organizations is collecting magazines that have been returned to the post office as undeliverable, and is arranging to ship them to the soldiers.
"It'll give the troops something to do," COSSO member Mae Abbadusky said Thursday. "There are all kinds and types of magazines -- something for everybody."
The effort is spearheaded by COSSO President Joe Fraccola, a World War II veteran who also collects playing cards from casinos and ships them to the troops.
"Our first collection got 400 or 500 magazines, maybe more," Fraccola said while sorting through the periodicals in the garage of his Gold River home.
Fraccola said he got the idea from a woman who organizes a magazine-collection effort in Texas. The woman read about Fraccola and his playing cards in a June issue of Parade Magazine, and contacted him for advice on shipping.
"She was going to have to pay a lot for shipping, because magazines are heavy," he said.
Fraccola told the woman about his free-shipping arrangement with a local military base, and in turn took her magazine idea and ran with it.
Three local post office branches are participating, and Fraccola said he expects more to join in.
As a non-profit organization, COSSO is allowed to take undeliverable magazines free of charge as long as it agrees to remove the address labels and not to sell the periodicals.
The playing card campaign has received praise from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense. After sending more than 11,000 decks of cards to the military earlier this year, Fraccola now has 9,526 decks in his garage waiting for the next shipment.
HOME
This page and its contents ©2002 Metropolitan News Company, Inc.
