TRAINER'S EYE #86 - "Healing Children With Pokemon Cards" ft. Cards For Kids

In this Pokemon interview, we are joined by Cards For Kids, a Pokemon Trainer from Plano, Texas who started a non-profit with the goal of providing healing for children who are victims of abuse through Pokemon Cards.

Cards For Kids Pokemon journey started with the Pokemon TCG where he would collect the cards and do trades with friends at school. Due to lack of finances, he was unable to really indulge into the Pokemon TCG like he can today.

However, with his passion for Pokemon cards and his background working in the criminal justice system, Cards For Kids started a non-profit with the mission to provide Pokemon cards to every law enforcement office and agencies that services children who are victims of abuse. Listen to this inspiring story and the unique way Pokemon can bring healing to children!

Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay

Connect with Cards For Kids: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

You can send Card Donations to:
3245 Main Street, Suite 235, Box: 192
Frisco, Texas, 75034

Transcript

David Hernandez: 0:00

My name is David Hernandez, and you're listening to As the Pokeball Turns. Welcome to As the Pokeball Turns. Our journey takes us to Plano, Texas, where we meet a Pokemon trainer who started a nonprofit centered around the idea of helping provide comfort to children who are victims of abuse through Pokemon cards. Initially partnering with the Collin County Child Advocacy Center, he has branched into different parts of Texas and has even started partnering with agencies in neighboring states such as Louisiana. Thanks to a combination of his interest in the Pokemon TCG and his unique background within law enforcement, he is helping bring comfort to many children across the state. Or, as his slogan better puts it, gotta help em all. Here is his origin story into the world of Pokemon. This is Cards for Kids. Today, I'm joined by the founder of Cards for Kids, Chris, thank you for coming on the show.

Cards For Kids: 1:31

Thank you for having me, David.

David Hernandez: 1:32

you know, your tagline's gotta help them all. And, for those who are not familiar with, what you're doing, can you give a brief summary of what your mission's about?

Cards For Kids: 1:40

Absolutely. we collect Pokemon cards and other things from the community and we take those items and we repackage them and distribute them to different organizations. We work with. These organizations help children who are either abused, ill, or injured.

David Hernandez: 1:56

And what made you want to start something like this? Cause it's a very noble cause to be able to give trading card games to these kids.

Cards For Kids: 2:02

well, that started out with me sorting through my, bulk Pokemon cards and having bunches of extras and not knowing what to do with them, and anyone who's been in the TCG collecting will know that you end up with tons of extra cards, and most of them have little to no sales value if you were trying to, do that on the, Secondary market, so I was scratching my brain trying to figure out what to do with these and I'm a 9 1 1 dispatcher. So I was just talking to 1 of our detectives who works for the, Plano Police Department and calling County Child Advocacy Center and we were discussing, you know, what they do with their mission and they were telling me how pretty much the only thing they have for Children to comfort them, during these real traumatic times is stuffed animals. And of course, anyone, you know, over the age of 8 or 10 is not going to, want a stuffed animal. especially preteens and teens. So, uh, Figured, Hey, this will be something that I can do to get rid of the extra cards I have, and hopefully, put even just a little small smile on someone's face whenever they're going through something. whether it be at the hospital or if they, fell outta a tree, broke their arm or you know, something happened at home that caused them to have to go to one of these places.

David Hernandez: 3:17

Now, just to get some context, the Collin County Child Advocacy Center, they primarily work with children who've been abused, correct?

Cards For Kids: 3:22

they do counseling and they assist the police department investigations just like there's actually, I'd have to look at the exact number, but I believe there's 82, 83 child advocacy centers across Texas. And they all have very similar missions and ways of handling things. I said, assist the police departments in their investigations because children, will be more open to speaking to someone who's trained as a psychologist, psychiatrist versus, you know, an officer in a uniform. so it's there to not only help them with the investigations, but also provide the children with, you know, therapy and grief counseling and The kind of tools to help them manage them going through these difficult scenarios so, like I said, while they do work with law enforcement, pretty much every child advocacy center. I've gone to All the employees are civilians, though.

David Hernandez: 4:13

And it's kind of cool though, to kind of see like, hey, these kids who are at a certain age don't really identify maybe well with stuffed animals at this point. And for you to kind of see like, hey, maybe that could be done with Pokemon cards. one question I wondered, like, has there been a noticeable like relationship since starting this?

Cards For Kids: 4:29

well, one thing that, and this started being, again, a 9 1 1 is unfortunately, we don't get a lot of direct feedback. primarily, of course, because of, privacy. Issues, you know, these are children. you know, we're not going to get a list of like, here's all the kids who got your cards. but we have gotten some feedback from the people who run these organizations that it's already served, you know, the purpose of having something for these older kids and that one of the most requested items they have is Pokemon in general when they do like Christmas wish lists and stuff like that, kids almost always have Pokemon on that list.

David Hernandez: 5:10

I think that's cool to see how Pokemon can be a healing tool for kids. And the fact that, you know, you can do that with cards. I know it's still early on, but are you considering trying to branch out to give other stuff besides Pokemon cards or just right now, just strictly Pokemon cards?

Cards For Kids: 5:24

Yep, there's a couple of things that we are doing. it's kind of a two way approach. There's We're going to be doing some collections for agencies. granted, since we have started early, we're getting our foot in the door with a lot of this, but there's some agencies that will do like Christmas raffles for their organizations and things like that. So we're going to be having items that we can donate to them to help them raise money for their organizations on their own. And we also have some of the items ourselves and we're making some different craft stuff for ourselves to help raise money for our organization because while of course the cards are the majority of what we need with like any non profit there's some other expenses, so that's one way we try to raise some money as well.

David Hernandez: 6:12

So you originally started with doing the Collin County Child Advocacy Center, and you've been able to branch out to other places as well, right?

Cards For Kids: 6:18

yes, that is correct. We are actually with quite a few agencies now. We are adding more, pretty much weekly at this point, but as of right now, we are with 11 different organizations.

David Hernandez: 6:31

Oh, wow. That's crazy.

Cards For Kids: 6:33

Yeah, all the way to Louisiana. I actually went to Louisiana about three weeks ago, and we got Schreiner Children's Hospital, which a lot of people, of course, are familiar with, um, The one there happens to primarily take care of children with, prosthetics and things like that. We're also with the Scottish Rite Hospital here in Dallas. they do a similar mission as well. Both of those organizations are Masonic based, which I am myself a Master Mason, which is how I got involved with those organizations. and otherwise, we also went to the gingerbread house, which is a child advocacy center in Shreveport and then we went up and down the I 20 corridor, hitting numerous other places. Some that are very small, such as the Children's Advocacy Center of Van Zandt County. That's in Canton, Texas. I had a long talk with their director, and, Because they're so isolated, they tend to get overlooked a lot when it comes to donations and, any kind of positive coverage. but they are the only child advocacy center for that huge area and they get, you know, 60, 80 cases a month of different things. you know, they need to help just as much as all the other ones, but since they're not in high, high population areas, they tend to get overlooked. So it was really rewarding to be able to go over to them and, help them get something going for them.

David Hernandez: 7:55

How did you get connected with these places? Like, were these just places that reached out to you once they heard about what you were doing with Collin County? Or are these just ones that you kind of found out that this might be beneficial?

Cards For Kids: 8:05

Well, funny enough, I started since I talked to our detective, found out what even a child advocacy center was. I went to there's a child advocacy center, Texas website, and it lists all of them in Texas. So I just started emailing Facebook messaging, instant gramming everyone. I could, getting ignored by most, Because they just, you know, of course, they get spam. But now that we've added quite a few organizations, we're starting to get, answers back from these people much more frequently now, course, helps. a lot of these organizations are starting to talk to each other. there's a child advocacy center, convention, In Texas, multiple times during throughout the year. So they've already started sharing my business card, things like that. but honestly, I've done so much reaching out myself that these people don't have the chance to reach out to me I want to aggressively expand. I want every kid in Texas to have the opportunity to get a card and hopefully eventually the country. I just don't know if I could scale up that high myself personally, because it does take a very long time to make these packs. but yes, it would be the goal if we could go nationwide eventually, you know, make some sort of satellite. organizations in other states, whatever have you. But of course, since a lot of these organizations are nonprofits and or government related, like Conkounty Advocacy Center, we're also with Plano Police Department Victim Services, which that is. Sworn employees and civilian and that is actually in the police department. you know, they don't tend to reach out so much as wait for donations to come in.

David Hernandez: 9:33

I was curious, you said it took a long time to make these packs. So what is the process and how long does it take for you to kind of make these packages for these children that the cards to?

Cards For Kids: 9:42

Let me tell you, I am probably doing more than I should as far as what I decided to do, but basically I'll take all my cards, separate them out by energy type first, you know, dark, psychic, grass, et cetera. And then I will, It's going to get a little nerdy right now. I'm sorry,

David Hernandez: 10:00

go. Hey, you're on a Pokemon podcast. We're already nerdy as it is. Go

Cards For Kids: 10:04

but so I'll take, say 5, 000 cards. I got donated. Separate them into these piles, and I'll look and see that grass and water are the most big piles. They have the most cards in them. And then psychic, fighting, Colorless, electric fire, and then dark metal, etc. So what I'll do is look and see how big of stacks I have and calculate how many of each one should go in a pack so that I don't end up with one pack that's nothing but like grass or something. So, for like instance, each pack is 50. It'll have 6 grass, 6 water, five psychic, five fighting, five colorless, and et cetera, et cetera. And then some trainers, some training items. And I always make sure every pack has at least one holographic card and three reverse holo cards because kids love things that are shiny. So I want to make sure they have something special in the pack. That's not just all the same, once I get my like six grass, six water, whatever, I make sure that each card is not the same Pokemon. So they're getting six different grass, Pokemon, six different water. so that whenever they open this pack, you know, it's not just the same stuff over and over or a whole bunch of one thing or the other. So they can really get a little bit of variety, at least since. As most people know, most of these cards aren't necessarily valuable. so I do everything I can to try to increase the experience they get. For instance, I penny sleeve, for those who may not know, it's a small plastic, Sleeve that the cards go in to protect them. Most people tend to do that for what they call their hits or their ultra rares. I do it for anything that's holographic. So when that kid gets that, he's like, wow, this isn't a little sleeve. This has got to be cool. Right? To try to, you know, again, increase the value of what I'm doing. luckily when I'm at my job, there's some downtime and I get to do some of these projects there. I think I made about 150 packs and it took about 10 hours, but yeah. And I also include a small. Business card inside that's got our information on it. So if the kids ever want to follow us or parents or anyone else thinks we might be good somewhere else. They can share our information as well as on the back of each business card is a list of. The names and states of everyone who's donated to us so far.

David Hernandez: 12:20

How many States have you had donated?

Cards For Kids: 12:22

Uh, we are up to six states now. We've had quite a few people mail us things from around the country, as well as find things on eBay or Amazon, and they'll buy it and just ship it to us.

David Hernandez: 12:36

Is it kind of humbling to kind of see how many people are getting involved in this project? Because it just started as something very small, and then it's kind of grown up.

Cards For Kids: 12:42

It is extremely humbling to see not only just the outpour from people who are sharing our socials, which I've always said, if you can't do anything, if you can share us, you never know who it may reach. one really good story I have of that is we initially had a GoFundMe set up to pay for the legal fees to become an actual nonprofit, which, ended up being close to 1, 400 all in to get all the legal documents done. And I had told my friends and everyone I knew all over social media, please share, please share, different discord channels. I'm in of people. I know and hang out with and I ended up getting a few very large donations from People, I of course, had no idea who they were, which made it possible for us to get our non profit paperwork through. And it never would have happened if people hadn't just taken a couple seconds to share something on their social media.

David Hernandez: 13:40

And thanks to that, you know, you're on the verge of expanding, and all through Pokemon, which is just kind of cool to see. you know, you talked about how it's a lot of work, you put in 10 hours for hundreds of packs, right? What motivates you to keep doing this? Because you're not getting paid for it.

Cards For Kids: 13:55

Well, honestly, the drive is if I can positively affect even one kid. Someday, somewhere, because of what I did, it'll be worth it. You know, as corny as it sounds, it really just, you know, It goes back to, you know, when I was a kid, I, didn't grow up with a lot. I started collecting Pokemon ever since I was like 13 back when it came out. Yes. That's how old I am. And,

David Hernandez: 14:20

Amen,

Cards For Kids: 14:21

and, you know, I couldn't get Pokemon very often. Cause of course, you know, parents would rather buy food and other things than, you know, small pieces of cardboard. So growing up, not having a whole lot. One of the things that I've always done is wanted to make sure kids don't have that same kind of issues I did.

David Hernandez: 14:42

You've been listening to As the Pokeball Turns. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. You talked about how, you know, you grew up, you didn't have much money to be able to collect the cards you wanted. so how much experience did you have at Pokemon? Did you get a chance to play the games or was this primarily whatever cards your parents were able to buy you?

Cards For Kids: 16:10

Well, like I said, I started back when I was about 13, pretty much in 99, Right when it started hitting America. had friends at school that did it, so I got into it. And the whole reason I initially got into it was actually to play the TCG game. I was not a collector. didn't ever go look for the rare cards. We didn't ever think for a second, Hey, this Charizard I just pulled might be worth$10,000 someday. I'm just going to throw it in a bag with the rest of mine.

David Hernandez: 16:38

All

Cards For Kids: 16:38

So yeah, I would go to card shops and play in little mini tournaments. Me and my friends would play. So that was, like I said, the main thing I actually did was play the trading card game. Even to this day, I have a handful of theme decks. I keep just so I can pull them out and me and the wife will play a hand or two here and there. Just, you know, have some fun. No, Big tournaments with all the rules, just to bring back some of that nostalgia. But as far as getting cards goes, it was, you know, trading on the playground. Hey, I got two, Mr. Mimes, give me your Muk or whatever, just so I can have a Muk. cause I don't need to Mr. Mimes,

David Hernandez: 17:15

You said you and your wife play the game. So what kind of decks do you have to kind of play together? And, is that kind of like a date night kind of thing?

Cards For Kids: 17:22

you know, she humors me, and plays cause she's definitely not a Pokemon fanatic. She thinks, Oh, that one's cute. But as far as the decks go, we just have some, you know, literal, like ones I've bought that are all preset up with everything in it. You just pull it out of the box and play with it. You know, nothing, nothing may, nothing changed. Just very simple, easy. Anyone can play it. But talking about my wife, I have to brag for a moment. I don't think I could have done this without her. She has been there every step of the way she's made posts. She's drove 20, 50 miles to go pick up a donation. She's been with me at the card shows. She's helped me sort cards, which is really fun trying to deal with someone who has no idea what Pokemon is. Cause she's like, I don't understand what's the difference between these two. And I'm like, I don't understand how you don't understand what the difference between those two are.

David Hernandez: 18:12

Right.

Cards For Kids: 18:13

But she really has been tremendous and she has helped me every step of the way and, you know, help contact people. And she is truly my driving force, you know, when I'm like, Oh my God, I got another huge donation. I don't think I could do this. And she's like, yes, you can go do it.

David Hernandez: 18:29

She motivates you or she keeps you in line, I guess.

Cards For Kids: 18:33

Absolutely.

David Hernandez: 18:34

So with the trading card game, now that you're mostly collecting, I know besides outside of the nonprofit, do you mostly keep a collection or do you try to play the card game still?

Cards For Kids: 18:41

Yeah, at this point, I don't really play the card game. I tried not too terribly long ago and I don't know if it was because of the store I went to, or if it was a bad day, but there was no F as in fun involved in the card game. so I was like, okay, I don't think I'm gonna do this anymore. And now I just collect to have, I'm trying to, basically Revise what I had as a kid. I want all the original 151 cards eventually someday because I still only really recognize the first 151 everything else is just kind of crazy to me I mean, they made a trash bag pokemon. They that's how you know, they're running out of ideas

David Hernandez: 19:22

Fair enough.

Cards For Kids: 19:23

And now I actually get really excited when I go buy a booster box and I'm like, Oh, look at all these extra cards. I have now that I'll make 20 packs out of that. And I've, besides Squirtle, Squirtle is the only thing that if it's a Squirtle card, I'll keep it. Even if I've got 50 of him, I'll keep it because squirtle is life. I've got a tattoo of him and about four stickers on my car

David Hernandez: 19:45

Oh, man, you Squirtle fanatic right here.

Cards For Kids: 19:48

Squirtle squad for life.

David Hernandez: 19:50

so are you trying to collect the 151 original base set or just trying to get one card of each original Pokemon from the 151?

Cards For Kids: 19:56

ideally the base set would be nice. I mean unless it's like You know a charizard that's basically been chewed by a dog. I don't see that happening anytime soon but for anyone who does collect pokemon, they'll know I got real big into the xy evolutions because they are Basically the 151 cards, just redone. So I do have some of those and Celebrations as well. You know, they redid basically the original OG Charizard and that. So I have that card, which is much more affordable option, of course. So I'm not a purist in the sense that I want, you know, that. I just want at least a representation of what that was, because again, it brings up so many childhood memories. I remember when I first completed my 151 set and my last card I ever had to get was a Koffing for whatever reason, I could not find a Koffing. So I had to go back onto the eBay, find one, send a money order to the person to get that one little car shipped to me again. I'm dating myself here. That was before PayPal even existed and get that Koffing. And I remember putting them in my little binder and I was so ecstatic.

David Hernandez: 21:03

So I actually have a funny story about Koffing, but it's the original base set one or fossil. You know, the first Koffing card. When I was young, we never played by collecting the cards. I always saw a Koffing card from this guy. I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't have that. And my naive self traded like a Holographic Ninetales, Gyarados, and one other card because I thought this Koffing was so rare. Little did I know it was actually just a common.

Cards For Kids: 21:24

Yeah. See, that was my problem. I would have traded. Pretty much anything for it, but the only person I knew had it was my friend who would not trade it for anything Yeah, I was like you have seven of them and he's like, yeah, and I want to keep seven of them I'm like, okay. Come on.

David Hernandez: 21:37

Koffing, Koffing was his favorite Pokemon. Clearly, I

Cards For Kids: 21:39

I was like, I was like, come on cough it up.

David Hernandez: 21:42

but that's just the innocent when you're a kid, right? You just see, you see the cards not as like physical value. You see it as like an actual Pokemon in a weird way. that's how I saw it with Koffing. It just, it seemed right at the time, but you know, people who know nowadays, it's what was I thinking kind of thing.

Cards For Kids: 21:55

Oh, yeah My very first deck I ever made as a kid was a Vulpix Ninetales deck, which was awful But I just loved Ninetales so much that I was determined to have a Ninetales deck

David Hernandez: 22:04

And that was the fun part. It's just like, the decks weren't good when you try to play, especially those early card games, but they were just fun to just experiment with. Cause that was kind of one of the first Card games for kids, if I could say that. Because I think Magic the Gathering was more for older teenager kind of things.

Cards For Kids: 22:17

Definitely more advanced as far as the rules and learning how to go for sure.

David Hernandez: 22:22

Now, just going back to your non profit, What do you hope it becomes as it continues to progress?

Cards For Kids: 22:27

Well, our first major milestone was actually becoming a nonprofit, an official Texas legal recognized nonprofit, Because one of the issues we run into is there's actually been a couple of TCG stores that have donated to us which these stores tend to have, thousands and thousands of extra cards not just you know someone in their attic who had a couple hundred of them. So these donations are very very helpful, but being a business they want a tax write off. And not only that, I've discovered, even basic things like PayPal, Venmo, etc. If you are an actual 501c3, they drastically slash the amount of money that they take from each donation you get. long term would be making every one in Texas and every law enforcement organization have access to our card packs for the kids and their communities. and then long, long, long, long term goal would be if we could go. nationwide.

David Hernandez: 23:26

That's some big dreams right there. But I think that's something that's definitely possible and I think if anything Pokemon has shown me is that anything's possible you just gotta put your foot out there and I think the fact that we were able to find each other hopefully man people come and gather to your mission man.

Cards For Kids: 23:40

Yeah, I'm hoping so. It's been amazing just in the, again, short time we've been doing this with the very limited reach I have. I mean, I personally only have, I think 120 some of the friends on Facebook. I don't have any Instagram following, anything like that. It was Pure word of mouth, pure, basically begging people, please, please give me something. We've not only amassed extremely large amount of cards, more than I ever dreamed I could get at this point, but we have actually taken those cards, made packs and distributed, actually put in the hands of these organizations over 25, 000 cards so far.

David Hernandez: 24:17

Oh my gosh it's incredible

Cards For Kids: 24:19

Yeah, it was a very huge milestone when I realized that we had hit that big of a number, which has probably been more by now. Honestly, that's just the last time I counted. but still, it was just huge to me to think that not only the short amount of time, but even if I'm generous and I say 2000, I donated out of my own personal collection. That is huge amount from complete strangers who basically. You know, I have very little to go on as far as, you know, everything can be a scam nowadays, and I've had lots of people say, how do I trust you? What, you know, and I don't blame them whatsoever. I'm skeptical, just the same, which again, getting our actual Texas recognized nonprofit has helped, and I've taken pictures with all these organizations that organizations have posted me on there. Social media as well. And all this has helped, you know, more legitimize what we do to help people, realize, Oh, well, you know, maybe this is something real and I can do something for it and help them out.

David Hernandez: 25:18

yeah because I was the same way because I was like is this guy legit or not because it just seems like a random profile pic and a random flyer and then I had to do my own investigation to make sure.

Cards For Kids: 25:26

Yeah. And that's the bigger, you know, we can get even just again, in social media, having some followers, the more legitimacy we can make to that. I plan on eventually doing some actual card making streams on like Tik TOK or something, to kind of show people the process as well. but just continuing to, you know, take pictures every time we go out somewhere. I've got some letters from these organizations saying, Hey, thank you for doing this. for any of the big donors we get who are skeptical, you know, I'll, give them that kind of stuff. Say here, look, this is what we've done. And I try to use, you know, my line of work as well as a further indication of, you know, hey, I'm not going to do something, illegal and stupid because, I work right next to an officer. I don't really want to. You know, bring the hammer down, hammer justice down on myself.

David Hernandez: 26:15

Well, Chris, thank you for coming on the show. But before you go, if people want to get connected, if they want to kind of be a part of the mission you're doing, if they want to contribute, where can they go? By all means, please plug away.

Cards For Kids: 26:25

Well, I've tried to make everything as absolutely simple as possible. So basically the Instagram, TikTok, Discord, Twitch. Yeah, we have a Twitch. We haven't used it yet, but we have it. Even our email is just simply. Cards for kids TX So if you search@CardsForKidsTX on Instagram or any of the other things, even Facebook, it's card for kids TX. and our Gmail is cards for kids TX. Our website is cards for. Dot kids. That's it. And, you know, just take it to the Facebook for now, but yeah, we've tried to make it super simple to where no matter what someone types, I'll be able to find us. Cause again, that's the biggest part of not only finding new places to donate to, but also places to donate to us.

David Hernandez: 27:12

Cool beans. And I'll make sure to include links to everything he said in the description of this episode. Thank you for listening to As the Pokeball Turns. If you want to support the show, consider becoming a Patreon by either clicking the link in the description or going to patreon. com slash as the pokeball turns. Now, if you aren't able to support the show financially, you can always support the show by sharing it with your Pokemon community, because this show wouldn't exist without listeners like you. Now, here's a sneak peek for the next episode of As the Pokeball Turns.