Toy drive has Chet Buchanan on ride of his life

By John Katsilometes

Friday, Dec. 11, 2015 | 1:30 p.m.

The Kats Report Bureau at this writing is 30 feet above West Sahara Avenue, just west of Jones Bouldevard, in the NV Energy parking lot.

No, I am not late on my bill.

This is the position of KLUC-FM 98.5 personality and tireless philanthropist Chet Buchanan hosting the 17th annual KLUC Toy Drive. Buchanan took this spot Dec. 3 and is atop the scaffold until 10 a.m. Monday. You can catch a sight of him from West Sahara as one car just honked and another pair of pedestrians have shouted toward the high-rising platform.

“Yo!” Buchanan calls back. “Happy holidays! We need toys!” Brothers and sisters, that is true. At the moment, the toy drive has drawn 2,769 bicycles toward a goal of 5,147 (one more than was raised last year) and a financial target $323,093 ($1 more than was raised last year).

“On the MDA Telethon, Jerry Lewis always used to say, ‘One more dollar,’ and we’re saying, ‘One more toy, one more bike, one more gift card,’” says Buchanan, several minutes after the morning rush has subsided. “He is my hero.”

The overarching goal from this high-overhead headquarters is simple: Collect unwrapped toys and new bicycles and deliver them to needy kids. Buchanan is taking the bulk of these items from 6 to 10 a.m. during his morning radio show, but they can be dropped off 24/7, as Buchanan is always on this platform.

“I’m the huckster,” Buchanan says. “I’m the guy singing and dancing on the street holding the sign that says, ‘Toy drive!’”

The event was staged at Boulevard Mall the first two years, 1999 and 2000. The next six were at CompUSA, the since-closed computer store on West Sahara, and since 2006 it has been at NV Energy.

“This year, I have been named NV Energy’s CIO: chief inspiration officer,” Buchanan says, smiling. “It’s an unpaid position.”

The work does not cease Monday morning, of course. The moment this drive is finished, a team of HELP of Southern Nevada employees and a fleet of trucks arrive to deliver the haul to HELP’s compound on East Flamingo Road.

“We have a swarm of people delivering these bikes and toys in huge trucks,” Buchanan says. “It’s a major operation, a big convoy of bikes and toys.”

To quantify the amount of time Buchanan has spent in this capacity, this is the 17th year for the toy drive, and he has taken part in 15. He missed 2002 and 2003 after taking a job in Portland, Ore., but was back in Las Vegas with KLUC and the toy drive in 2004.

Buchanan calculates that he has logged the equivalent of six months on the perch.

Buchanan’s reign over the toy fiefdom now spans generations. He has seen and heard it all from up here.

“The people who are served are not those you might expect. It’s always people who all of a sudden medical bills pile up, or lost a job just before the holidays, or have had a death in the family,” Buchanan says. “It’s not a person who lives in an underpass. We’ve seen people who have donated every year but need help this year.

“I’m always being told, ‘I received help years ago, and I am now donating.’ I have hundreds of stories like that.”

And Buchanan, incredibly, has never stepped off this platform during any toy drive. That mark was nearly interrupted just Thursday night, late, for a crisis in Buchanan’s family.

As the winds swept across the platform — and wind, Buchanan says, is “the predator of toy drive, our natural mortal enemy” — he received a call from his wife, Amy. The family dog, Cheffry (an ode to Amy’s job as executive pastry chef at Caesars Palace), was having trouble breathing. The West Highland terrier was getting on in years, at 14, and Amy hustled him to the vet on an emergency call.

There, the dog simply stopped breathing and peacefully passed away. Just like that, right there on the exam table. About a half-hour had passed since Amy contacted Chet.

“I was talking to Amy, we were both upset, and it went through my head that I could step down from here, be to my house in 10 minutes, take care of her and be back,” Buchanan says. “But Amy told me, ‘Once you step off, you can’t take that back.’ I could never again say I have spent the entire time on this cause.”

So Amy drove to the darkened parking lot at NV Energy, climbed the metal stair and met her husband at the toy drive headquarters.

There, they hugged it out.

“It’s surreal, and weird, to be dealing with something like that up here,” Buchanan says with nearly 3,000 bicycles in the backdrop below him. “But living six months of my life on a scaffold, there is a great familiarity about it. It’s like it’s part of my home.

“Some people have a cabin they get away to — I have a scaffold on West Sahara.”

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.