EVERETT — If you’re already plotting to hit the clearance sales after Christmas, you’d better be fast.

Vickie Nysether and Pam Sorenson will be in area stores, too, scooping up cartloads of half-price dolls and 75 percent-off coats and leaving little in their wake except empty shelves and lonely discount signs.

Nysether and Sorenson call themselves "professional shoppers," but their bargain hunting is for a good cause.

The volunteers for Christmas House spend almost an entire year scouring stores for deep discounts on gifts that end up under the Christmas trees of low-income Snohomish County kids each year.

Christmas House has been giving presents to needy families since 1981, and last year gave away more than 36,000 gifts to 5,525 children. The group is expecting to help about 6,000 kids this year, said Mark Nysether, a fund-raiser and volunteer for Christmas House and Vickie Nysether’s husband.

Christmas House opens Friday at the Boys and Girls Club gymnasium, 2316 12th St., Everett. Low-income parents will be able to roam from table to table to pick gifts for their children. All of the items are new except for some used winter coats and clothes.

Companies or individuals donate many of the gifts. The group is still accepting donations at sites throughout Snohomish County.

But Sorenson, Vickie Nysether and three other volunteers buy most of the presents during frequent shopping trips throughout the year. Donors gave $119,000 last year to Christmas House, and most of that was used to buy gifts.

They start the day after Christmas.

"We go to anybody who has a clearance sale: Wal-Mart, Kmart, Fred Meyer, Target, Rite Aid," Sorenson said as she stood in the Boys and Girls Club gym surrounded by toys and clothes laid out on tables.

"Oh, yeah, Rite Aid," Vickie Nysether said fondly. "We wiped them out of toys. Rite Aid was the best."

Throughout the year, they scan store advertisements and make periodic trips to major stores as far away as Seattle to look for presents.

In March, Sorenson could hardly contain herself when she found $55 children’s coats that had been marked down to $5.35 at Sears.

"I couldn’t believe it," she said. "I was so excited. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Coats are very important to us."

Sorenson and the Nysethers are two of the more than 200 volunteers who are helping Christmas House this year.

"I can’t wait for Friday," Vickie Nysether said. "We worked so hard to make sure the kids get all this quality stuff, and then we get to see their parents’ smiling faces."

Reporter David Olson:

425-339-3452 or

dolson@heraldnet.com.