RICHMOND – Hundreds of community residents surrounded the hunting grounds April 2 at Maurice Roberts Park during the first of two Richmond Parks and Recreation Department Community Easter Egg hunts.

“We were in COVID-19, so everything got shut down (last year),” Parks and Recreation Director Haley Williams said while making last-minute arrangements at the park for the hunt’s start.

The planned hunts – kindergarteners and younger in the first round, and first- through fourth-graders in round two – lacked some of the celebratory activities of previous years, Williams said. “We’re having modifications this year. We usually have a bounce house and face painting, but we will not be having that this year,” she said.

Haley Firth and Alyssa Caldwell, both 16, sat in front of cupcakes and other baked goods at a table next to the pavilion while waiting for festivities, including their cake walk, to start.

“Donations for the cake walk came from Harps and Walmart,” Williams said.

Volunteers for the event included the Ray County Sheriff’s Office.

“I saw that Haley Williams had posted that she was still looking for people to put eggs out for the Easter egg hunt and I’m very big on community policing,” Sheriff Scott Childers said after giving directions for deputies to make sure no children wandered out toward busy East Main Street during the hunt. “If it’s inside the county, then I feel like it’s the responsibility of the Sheriff’s Office to help out.”

Law enforcers being involved in the community sends a good message to children, Childers said.

“A lot of times, when we deal with kids, we see the bad things,” he said. “Today, we get to see the good things. We get to see happy kids out looking for Easter eggs and getting little prizes, and that’s very healthy for us as deputies; and it’s nice for the community to see us out here and being involved with them.”

Volunteers spread hundreds of plastic Easter eggs across the designated hunting ground taped off within the park.

“In the eggs, we have candy, we have little Easter tattoos, McDonald’s gave us coupons … and there’s little toys,” Williams said. “There are 4,000 to 5,000 eggs per hunt, so together, we probably have 8,000 to 10,000 eggs. …All our donations came from individuals or businesses within the community.”

Before lines began to form, Williams could not guess how much participation the hunt would draw.

“I really don’t know this year. I don’t think there’s any other hunts going on right now, at this time, that I know of,” she said. “In the past, we’ve had anywhere from 60 people to 100 people, or 200, so I really just don’t know what to expect this year.”

After a year of events being called off because of the pandemic, the public turned out for the hunts. At a minimum for the first hunt, around 200 people – parents with children, many of them toddlers – stood waiting for the police tape to drop and the hunt to begin.

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