A real estate office in the heart of Downtown Downey, Keller Williams South East Los Angeles, put on a ‘Trunk or Treat’ celebration Thursday, October 29, on the second floor of the District @ Downey parking lot from 4pm-6pm.
By Clarissa Arceo
CEO and Team Leader of #kwSELA, Monica Rivera, shares her team’s event with the community and the reasoning behind it. With COVID-19 thwarting many’s plans throughout the year, businesses and organizations have had to compromise and work around/with the situation and its regulations.
Rivera shares that every year, her agents get together for a potluck in costumes to celebrate Halloween, but with the year turning everything upside down they decided to give back to the community instead.
Rivera states, “We believe that who you are in business matters and that the company you keep can contribute to our lives in untold ways. This belief is the cornerstone of how we operate and sets the tone for the culture we have here which is one of the community and giving back. We wanted a place for our agents, their clients and our community to be able to safely enjoy Halloween this year.”
The agents set up about an hour before the event, decorating their cars and dressing in costumes. Everything given out was individually packaged and sealed for safety in bowls or bins in their cars while children visited each to ‘trick or treat’.
Rivera shares that her team was a bit concerned regarding the turnout of the event but strived to create a fun atmosphere for everyone that showed up. Everyone wore a face mask and practiced social distancing as best as they could.
Many parents expressed worry of not being able to provide a Halloween experience for their children. And many found out about the event, just in time, through a local resident sharing the event in the Downey Community Corner Facebook group’s page throughout the week.
About 150 people, parents and children, visited the 12 decorated cars filled with candy over the course of two hours, and the event exceeded the agents’ expected turnout. “There were so many families; the kids had a blast and the parents expressed so much gratitude,” she says, “The phrase we kept hearing besides the kids’ ‘trick or treat’ were the ‘thank you’ from the parents.”
The turnout of the event was overall satisfying, not only to Rivera but the rest of the agents, and Monica Rivera expresses her gratitude of being able to put a smile on the families’ faces tonight.
