No Tricks, All Treats: This legal team provides kids with Halloween costumes
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Tanner Hesterberg, a solo practitioner in Pikeville, Kentucky, wants to make sure that local children in need can dress up for Halloween. He came up with the idea of helping connect children with costumes last year, when he noticed that some of the children in his community couldn’t afford to dress up.
“That broke my heart. It’s a really big deal for a kid to be able to dress up as their favorite superhero or cartoon character on Halloween,” says Hesterberg, who specializes in criminal defense cases.
For the last month, he and two legal assistants from his office have been fundraising for costumes for children in Floyd County, Kentucky, where Hesterberg lives. It is in Eastern Kentucky and part of the Cumberland Plateau of the Appalachian Mountain range.
They plan to deliver about 300 Halloween outfits to students at 10 elementary, middle and high schools whose families wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford them.
That includes about 40 Spider-Man costumes, along with several Ghostfaces from the movie Scream, a Lorax and four or five Wednesday Addams costumes. Another popular costume is Glinda, or Galinda, from the movie Wicked, says Hesterberg, 35.
“Surprisingly, nobody wanted to dress up as a lawyer,” he says.
As Halloween approached this year, he talked over the logistics of a costume drive with his legal assistants, Rhealyn Moore and Megan Williams. He says they jumped on the idea. They asked school administrators to identify children in challenging financial situations and write down a list of the costumes they wanted, along with their sizes.
Then, the three set up an Amazon registry with specific costume requests and shared the information on social media. Hesterberg emphasizes that neither he nor his staff know the identities of the children for whom the costumes are being purchased.
The community response, Moore says, has been “incredible and beyond anything we ever expected.”
“Once we shared our idea and our Amazon registry, people really showed up,” she says. “It was clear this effort touched some hearts.”
“There will not be a child on that list who goes without a Halloween costume this year, I promise you that,” Hesterberg says. He says his firm will purchase anything on the registry that is not bought.
The costume drive was important to Williams because she’s seen “how hard it can be for every child to have a Halloween costume.”
“I grew up in similar circumstances, and I know how meaningful it can be to have your communities support you,” she says.
Angie Martin, the family resource coordinator for John M. Stumbo Elementary, says her school will be receiving 38 costumes from Hesterberg’s team. She feels “blessed to be able to be a part of the program.”
“I’m excited for my kiddos,” Martin says.
Hesterberg adds that he’ll probably dress as an FBI agent for at least one local Halloween event, while Williams, Moore and Hesterberg’s girlfriend will dress as burglars.
They plan to expand the costume drive to more children next Halloween.
“I thank God every day for planting me in Eastern Kentucky, and I wanted to pour blessings back into the community,” Hesterberg says.
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