Thanksgiving is a holiday long-established for celebration with family and friends. But there are those who may not have close friends or family nearby; those who don’t have the means, or the ability to travel. In some communities, these people might fall through the cracks. But in Washington, Project I Live Alone is making sure they don’t — and also making sure they have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, Washington police officers and firefighters teamed up with telecommunicators to deliver “goodie bags” to the 22 clients who’ve signed on with Project I Live Alone. In each bag: a turkey loaf, stuffing, rice, yams, a vegetable, gravy, cornbread, tea and a few miscellaneous goodies — all proceeds from a Washington Police and Fire Services in-house food drive.

“It’s everything that you’d really need to have, to have a really good Thanksgiving meal,” said Kimberly Grimes, WPD’s community outreach coordinator and Project I Live Alone orchestrator.

Project I Live Alone was launched in April and is managed by WPD telecommunicators. Each week, telecommunicators call clients on random days just to say “hello” and make sure they’re doing okay.

“They don’t have family to check on them; they don’t have family nearby and we are that filler for them,” said Ashley Sullivan, a lead WPD telecommunicator. “If we can’t get up with them, we send the officers out there to check on them just to make sure.”

Of their 22 Project I Live Alone clients, some are disabled; most are elderly. Women in the program outnumber men 19 to 3, but all have expressed their appreciation for their new telecommunicator and police support network.

“They are so excited and they love the phone calls every day. They truly brighten your day because they are so excited to talk to you,” Sullivan said.

Project I Live Alone is the culmination of projects and programs that bring together the larger community with its police officers, first responders, telecommunicators and firefighters, according to Stacy Drakeford, director of Washington Police and Fire Services. That’s been his goal since taking the director’s position three years ago, he said.

“It started from the very beginning — getting these officers out of their vehicles, getting them to know who is in this community and who needs what type of service and trying our best to provide the service or putting them in contact with the best resource that can provide that service,” Drakeford said. “That’s how you build a community — one step at a time. We’re all about the greater good.”

For WPD telecommunicators, that’s meant going beyond the program’s original stated purpose and becoming more personally involved with their clients: sending birthday and get well cards, stopping by for visits, always with a police officer in tow — one elderly gentleman doesn’t miss his new tradition of Sunday breakfast with officers on duty.

“The officers have started to see the positive reinforcements that we TCs (telecommunicators) have gotten, and they’ve started going out and doing stuff on their own,” Sullivan said. “We know so much about (the clients’) lives and we are truly involved in their lives now, as they are in ours.”

“They’ve tailored the program the way they wanted to. It’s still the basic concept, but they took it and they do more than we asked them to do,” Grimes said.

Tuesday, the results of Project I Live Alone were apparent, Sullivan said, based on the number of big hugs she and other Thanksgiving “goodie bag” deliverers received. Four clients who did not need the Thanksgiving delivery continued the generosity by donating their bags to Ruth’s House, the local domestic violence shelter, in turn.

“We all talk about building bridges. Right now, I think our bridge is built and all we’re doing is providing services to those people,” Drakeford said. “(The job is) more than just locking people up. … It’s about providing service to the community.”

For more information about Project I Live Alone, contact Kimberly Grimes at 252-943-1715.