A friend and I did a drive to collect costumes for the kids at the domestic violence shelter. We were camped out in front of Walmart and we'd ask people to grab a costume while they were inside and this was pretty effective.

About halfway through our day, a van stopped in front of our table and a woman got out. She said she used to own a costume shop and slid open the van door. I'll never forget the sight of that van just stuffed with costumes. Bags and bags of costumes. All the princesses. All the superheroes. All the knock-offs that we didn't know what they were!

We ended up with so many costumes we had to list them out on a spreadsheet so the DVS workers could locate specific costumes in all the tubs.