PHARR — The risk of severe weather did little to spook hundreds, if not thousands of costumed families from visiting the Pharr Police Department for its annual Trunk or Treat Halloween event Monday evening.
Lines of cars waited along Cage Boulevard for their chance to get candy from Pharr’s finest, many of whom greeted passengers with their own costumes.
“We have two events. We have Trunk or Treat, which is the drive-thru that you see right now, and a haunted house inside (the police department),” Acting Police Chief Juan Gonzalez said. “What we wanted to do was give them options. What we’ve seen in the past is that neighborhoods are packed with people. So we wanted to give other folks an option who didn’t want to go into the neighborhoods where they don’t have to get out of their car.
“At the same time, if they want to get down and enjoy a haunted house, we actually converted our lobby — with the help of the courts — into a haunted house,” he added. “It’s pretty cool.”
Monday’s event marked the third time the department hosted a Halloween event. It took about a month-and-a-half of planning to prepare for upwards of 2,000 guests.
Pharr police officer Steven Guerrero was at the front line of planning the Halloween event, a task he has undertaken since its inception in 2020.
“We started this actually in the year 2020 during COVID. Our team brought this into fruition,” Guerrero said. “It was a hard year for everybody, so we came up with the idea for a drive-thru Halloween event.”
The 2020 event was held at three locations, the Pharr Events Center, the Pharr Sports Complex, and the Pharr Development and Research Center. Last year’s event was held at the Pharr Vanguard Academy Nature & Birding Center, which was also the site of the Trail of Terror.
“This year is a little different because we’re opening up our doors and letting the community see what it’s like,” Guerrero said about the police department. “It’s a safe place. With all the stories going around with drugs mixed with candy and unsafe substances, we wanted to create a safe place for families to come together, get candy and show kids a good time.”
Many community entities contributed to the event through candy donations, which numbered in the hundreds, as well as booths along the drive-thru to give out their own candy to the costumed families.
A line of families also gathered just outside the doors to the police department, awaiting their chance to walk through the haunted house that featured dozens of masked volunteers.
Joanna Hernandez, 26, was dressed as a bag of Hot Cheetos. She attended the event with her family, including her husband who was dressed as a Hot Cheeto.
“It was fun. It was scary. I liked it a lot,” Hernandez said. “This is my first time. It was fun. It was good for the kids and the family.”
Jason Aguilera, 30, attended the event with his wife and their 7-year-old son, Julian, who was dressed as Iron Man.
“I saw online, on Facebook, that they were going to have the Trunk or Treat here for the kids, and we just decided to come by,” Aguilera said. “I think it’s well organized and a great way to give back to the community. Safe candy, safe trick or treating — it gets them away from all the traffic out there right now.”
They had initially waited in line to walk through the haunted house, but chose instead to get in line for the drive-thru trunk or treat.
“I got too scared,” Julian said. “Probably next time I won’t be so scared.”
