HANCOCK COUNTY — Officials with the Hancock County 911 Center along with county first responders certainly have the Christmas spirit. Each year, Greg Duda, the department’s public information officer, spends weeks preparing a Christmas Eve video to run on their social media site.
The annual video, which often has a public safety message, is geared toward children. However, the videos are quite popular and fill both kids and adults of all ages with Christmas cheer.
The idea to put together a Christmas Eve video came about five years ago, Duda said. Before that, they’d send out Christmas Eve cheer over their dispatch radios, doing things like trying to locate Santa, which kids could listen to over the scanner.
When radios went digital and people couldn’t afford to spend $300 to $400 on a digital scanner, Duda came up with the idea to create some kind of fun Christmas message on their social media site.
“It was basically our Santa broadcast put onto Facebook,” Duda said.
Through the years, Duda has shot and edited the video for Christmas Eve with the help of first responders using police one year, firefighters the next and then both together.
“Now it’s become a pretty intricate production,” Duda said with a laugh. “Before Thanksgiving, I start by sending out emails to the different departments to see who is interested so we can get the schedules set up.”
Last year, Duda had an Indianapolis radio personality kick off the 11-minute video about Christmas Eve traffic while Santa Claus flew high above the county. Then a radio dispatch voice came online and informed several county police officers Santa had lost some packages in flight and it was their duty to find them and make sure the presents were delivered.
“This year’s video, like the ones we’ve done previously, will be focused towards little kids,” Duda said. “That’s still where the magic of Christmas is.”
This coming Christmas Eve video, Duda noted, will have a very different theme, one he created with numerous fire departments, including officials from Greenfield Fire Territory, Sugar Creek Township Fire Department and Buck Creek Township Fire Department.
“We like to do a video that shows what public safety is, which is helping people and doing good things, but this year we did do something a little bit different,” Duda said. “Without giving away too much, we have a different character this year.”
While videos in the past have had a little bit of slapstick comedy in them, Duda said this year’s video will have more of a message.
“We think this year’s video will do well with younger kids,” he said.
Duda worked with a few other members at the 911 Center team, including public information officer Alyssa Eichholtz, and came up with this year’s video idea.
“Santa is going to be implied this year, but you will not actually see him on camera,” Duda said. “This year’s video is about Christmas and basically the Christmas Spirit.”
Duda said they’ve had great success with the videos in the past, getting more than 26,500 hits on last year’s video, 16,700 hits in 2021, 18,400 hits in 2020 and 9,000 hits in 2019. Duda, who has a passion for video production and business marketing, feels fortunate his job with the 911 Center allows him to use some creativity and work on a community message each Christmas.
“It’s something I really enjoy doing,” Duda said. “It’s a community goodwill piece, something for everyone from us. It’s part of our unofficial mission — giving thanks to our community — and is part of our community-mindedness.”
Duda recalled a past video where they had a message from Santa Clause telling younger kids it was time to get to bed or he might pass them by and that, Duda said, got a lot of response, which is what makes all the work put into the video worth it.
“It’s the little messages that people post that make it all worthwhile,” Duda said. “One year, we had the actual Santa telling kids, ‘Hey, this is Santa. I’m here in Hancock County, so you kids better get to bed,’ and parents would post how their kids took off running to bed.”
This year’s video is slated to be posted on the Hancock 911 Center Facebook page at 8 p.m. Sunday.
