OGDEN -- Adam and Lavina Hoskins had been looking for an affordable coat that fits their 8-year-old daughter for a month and a half, with no luck.
They stood outside the Catholic Community Services Joyce Hansen Hall Food Bank with dozens of other families on Saturday afternoon, watching their three children run around outside the building. The families were all waiting for their chance to fit their children with new coats, hats, scarves and gloves for the winter.
"They just grow out of the (olds ones) so fast," Adam Hoskins said.
The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization, partnered with the United Way of Northern Utah to hand out more than 100 new coats to children that CCS had identified in the Ogden area.
Inside the food hall, long tables were covered with hats, gloves, scarves and coats, as well as volunteers to help the children try them on and find clothes that fit just right.
"I like it," Hoskins' daughter said, throwing her hands up and jumping up and down in her new purple-and-blue floral coat.
The Knights of Columbus hand out coats every year, but this was the first time they broadened their distribution centers away from Salt Lake City into other communities.
Had there not been a center in Ogden, Bianey Gorostieta said she does not think she would have been able to make the trip to pick up winter wear for her 4- and 11-year-old sons.
"I think this comes as an answer to a lot people's prayers," said Lauren McCarty, marketing coordinator for CCS.
In the past few months, CCS has been distributing nearly double the amount of food boxes that were distributed to families visiting the food bank at this time last year.
Times just became particularly hard for five children whose mother went into intensive care two weeks ago. She has stage-4 cancer that's spread throughout her body, said the children's stepmother Melissa Bailey, her voice cracking.
Bailey and their father have been looking after them since they arrived from Washington, where their mother is. The family is making it through these tough times, she said, and the care they received on Saturday helped.
Families also received a free hygenic kit and pastries as they left with the new clothes.
There were still a few piles of clothes at the end of the afternoon that CCS plans to hand out throughout the week to other families when they show up for food, McCarty said.
All together, the Knights of Columbus plans to hand out almost 600 coats in Park City, Heber City, Draper, Kearns and Ogden.
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