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Cindy Goritz provided 500 items of new clothing and shoes she purchased throughout the year.
When Cindy Goritz was growing up in the Long Island hamlet of Stony Brook, New York, her family celebrated five seasons: fall, winter, spring, summer and back-to-school.
“My parents would always buy us a few new outfits and they’d always buy us a new purse,” she said. “I remember how it made me feel. I felt special; I felt confident. I felt like I fit in.”
As the seasons turned into years, Goritz never forgot that feeling, which instilled in her a passion to ensure other children enjoy the same experience.
“I was blessed with a big heart, and I believe that if I have food on my table and a roof over my head, I am able to help people,” she said. “That’s important to me.”
Driven by that sentiment, Goritz, now in her 60s, has been involved with year-round charitable events throughout her career in retail management.
“That’s why I do the shopping sprees for the kids, because, number one, they need clothing that fits them appropriately,” she said. “There is evidence that shows that absenteeism is down if they have clothing that they’re able to wear that’s clean and that fits them. Kids can be really cruel, especially with clothes.”
Recently, dozens of children received new clothes and shoes courtesy of Goritz after she teamed up with The Salvation Army at two of its Arizona Corps Community Centers, the Amphi Corps and the All Nations Corps, both in Tucson. Between the two facilities, Goritz provided 500 items of new clothing and shoes she single-handedly purchased throughout the year by shopping closeout sales.
“I don’t do it for me to feel good. I do it for the kids to feel important.”
Cindy Goritz
“It just breaks my heart when I see people in need and the community not really coming together and reaching out,” said Goritz, who shops at leading department stores—some high-end—as she seeks quality clothing so, once they are gifted to a child in need, it will last.
By shopping year-round, the investment is easier to absorb.
“If everybody donated one coat to a school, one T-shirt to a school, one pair of jeans to a school, and they did that a couple of times a year… life would be so much easier,” she said.
Goritz likes to be on-site for the distribution to ensure the items, especially shoes, fit correctly so the child has room to grow.
“There was this one little girl who had a pair of shoes on,” Goritz said about a different Salvation Army outreach event earlier this year. “The sole was barely sticking at her heels so it would flop around. When she pulled her feet out of her shoes, they were absolutely black. So after that event, I went ahead and bought about $3,000 worth of shoes.”
Amphi Corps Officer Captain Kristy Church said Goritz supplemented an annual back-to-school program, Dress a Child. In the program, a limited number of children, often referred by a local school, are paired with a volunteer for a shopping spree at a department store.
“I’m just very thankful that she chose to do this with The Salvation Army,” Church said. “We benefited from her choice because Dress a Child is such a limited-space program. This kind of extended that program.
“These kids were not expecting anything. They didn’t really realize what we were doing until they went through the line, and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re getting new clothes,’ so we were able to surprise them.”
Church said it’s unusual for a donor to also be involved with the distribution.
“She saw the kids’ excitement and then she made sure that [the All Nations Corps] benefited as well,” Church said. “She kind of went a little further than what would have normally happened.”
Church recalled a family with five or six children, who all took home a couple of outfits.
“It really helped out these kids with self-esteem,” she said. “They were really ecstatic that they had new clothing.”
Bill Simon, then All Nations Corps program assistant, said the new clothes help the students focus on their studies instead of their appearance, which is also important to the parents.
“One of the parents came straight to me and said, ‘Thank you,’” Simon said. “Both his wife and himself were unemployed and they didn’t know what they were going to do to get their kids ready for the new school year.”
Goritz is already preparing to hit the stores for the next outreaches—just in time for all those Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.
“I don’t do it for me to feel good,” she said. “I do it for the kids to feel important.”
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