O2 Employment Services: Rallying Redding to Spread Holiday Cheer

As the second-sunniest city in the U.S., it may seem hard to make Redding, California, even brighter. But O2 Employment Services has found a way.

Three-and-change hours north of San Francisco and two hours south of the Oregon border, the city that gets more than 300 days of sunshine per year is the economic and cultural center of Shasta County.

One of the businesses that calls Redding home is O2 Employment Services, which has taken it upon itself to be the ringleader of corporate community service for the city of just under 100,000.

For CEO Heidi Corrigan, it’s part of her mission to give back to a community that has given so much to her. At the age of 19, she came to Redding from Kalama, Washington to play volleyball and study psychology at Simpson University. She loved it so much she never left.

In 2001, she founded Teamwork HR. It merged with its sister company O2 Staffing eight years later and O2 Employment Services was born, and three years later, so was the Give Redding Holiday Drive, an annual November event that provides toys, turkeys, and non-perishable food to local children and families who are victims of domestic violence and homelessness.

What sets Give Redding apart is that O2 has taken it upon itself to rally participation from all across the local business community to elevate the drive to greater heights.

At the end of October, O2 reaches out to local companies to gather interest. Those that participate — the 2023 holiday drive featured nearly 50 businesses — collect goods at their respective offices then join at O2’s headquarters, usually on a day just prior to Thanksgiving, to deliver donated items. The result: a parking lot’s worth of frozen turkeys and hams, mashed potatoes and gravy, non-perishable pantry foods, toys, and other items to spread holiday cheer.

The collected items are distributed to three area nonprofits: One SAFE Place Shasta, a domestic violence service and shelter; Good News Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter; and Pathways to Hope for Children, a child abuse and neglect prevention organization.

Since 2012, the Give Redding Holiday Drive has collected more than 12,000 pounds of food and 8,000 toys collected for those in need.

“The entire town gets involved and all the local businesses like to give back to local nonprofits who help those struggling and in need,” Corrigan said. “We network our organization with so many other companies in town. And when we’re successful giving back, so is our community.”

Since its inception in 2012, the drive has continued to grow both in terms of participants and goods donated, now making it the community’s largest food drive. More than 400 business partners and 2,500 volunteers have rallied to collect more than $170,000 worth of donations to local charities. This includes more than 12,000 pounds of food — including 5,000 turkeys — as well as more than 8,000 toys for area youth.

Participants run the gamut from local establishments like Golden Valley Bank, Girls Inc. of the Northern Sacramento Valley, and the Shasta Historical Society to nationally recognized names like Outback Steakhouse and Farmers Insurance. There’s even a local Jeep dealer that fills one of its showroom floor vehicles to the brim with non-perishables and toys. A photographer is ready to snap photos of participants posing in a trifecta turkey cutout on donation delivery day.

O2 Employment Services CEO Heidi Corrigan (center) has helped spearhead the collection of more than 5,000 turkeys for Northern California Thanksgiving celebrations.

And whether a downtown painting business, HVAC company, eye shop, or radio station, they all join with the same goal: make Thanksgiving and Christmas a bit brighter for those less fortunate.

“We live in such an amazing area that loves to give back,” Corrigan said. “The fact that we could spearhead an initiative that’s been successful in getting other companies involved as well has been amazing. Every year it gets bigger and bigger.”

As a result, O2 has become a fixture in this already tight-knit city.

What sets Redding apart from everywhere else in California, Corrigan says, is it’s a place where you can live and work within a five-to-ten-mile radius. Knowing that, she’s taken it upon herself to give back in more ways than one. The impact is palpable.

She’s the former chairwoman of the Redding Chamber of Commerce as well as its Forward Redding Foundation, where she helped lead its 20 ideas by 2020 initiative to bring breweries, colorful umbrellas, murals, and live street music to the downtown corridor. She also serves on the advisory committee of alma mater Simpson University.

And even as Redding and greater Shasta County have grown and changed since her early transplant days in the area, they still maintain their organic small town feel.

“You’re rubbing shoulders with people whose kids go to school with your kids,” she said. “People like to do business with people they know and trust. And that’s worked to our advantage.”