Fox visited Morrill Elementary School within Harlandale ISD to help families during the holiday season and talks about tamales.
SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Spurs are in full holiday cheer, doing their part to help families throughout San Antonio this season.
Devin Vassell hosted young athletes from the Eastside Clubhouse Boys & Girls Clubs of San Antonio for a memorable holiday sit-down meal. He also spoke with the kids, participating in a hands-on craft activity, and surprised each child with a $50 gift card to take home for the holiday season.
Harrison and his wife, Brittany Barnes, teamed up with H-E-B to support the San Antonio Eastside community near the Frost Bank Center by going the extra mile and personally purchasing $40,000 in H-E-B gift cards to surprise the first 100–200 families at the Houston Street H-E-B. At checkout, each family had their groceries fully covered and received an additional $200–$400 H-E-B gift card to help with holiday food expenses.
Meanwhile, De’Aaron Fox and his family visited families from the Morrill Elementary School in the Harlandale ISD, distributing turkeys and non-perishable essentials ahead of the holidays. It was a chance for the Fox family to connect directly with residents, have fun with a raffle and offer photo opportunities for fans to meet the Spurs guard.
After the event, Fox took time to answer some holiday-themed questions, why he committed to helping south-side families, and if he indulges in a San Antonio holiday tradition – tamales and more.
Jeff: What sparked this? What got you going for this event?
De’Aaron: “This is kind of something that me and my wife do basically pretty much every year that we’ve been together. We usually do something for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. We just love the holiday season, just love the feeling, not even for us to the point where I don’t care if I get anything.”
“And then my birthday is also actually around Christmas, but I just love giving. Just love to be able to put a smile on people’s faces, and obviously, we are very fortunate.”
“We’re in very fortunate positions that we are able to do things like that, and we just love doing it every year for people. The community supports us, and we wouldn’t be here without the type of support that you have for the league that we play in and for the teams that we play for. So, just being able to do that in the community that you’re in, I think, is always a blessing.”
Jeff: The community you helped serve today includes some from lower-income areas of San Antonio. What does it mean to help these families?
De’Aaron: “It is a blessing for us just to be able to be in a position to do this. And growing up, my school was actually 60% Hispanic and 30% African American. So, this is a community I was used to growing up in, being comfortable growing up in, and being around. So, just being able to help any which way we can. We love to do it, and I still give back to my high school right now, so we give scholarships from my high school. So, this is something that we do all the time.”
Jeff: What is your favorite holiday memory?
De’Aaron: “When I was a kid, I got a toy Escalade with spinners on it, and this is when MP3 players were big. So, it had an MP3 player in the back, the one Christmas gift, because usually I would get video games, and my parents would be like, Oh, it’s your Christmas gift but I got this in February. But that’s one of the biggest Christmas gifts, I think, that I’ve gotten, that I truly remember.”
Jeff: So I know you’re going to have to pick up some San Antonio tamales during the holidays.
De’Aaron: “Oh, I do tamales. We had this store in front of my neighborhood that we could just walk to, and my dad would literally go and get tamales. So, I put Louisiana hot sauce on tamales growing up. Literally, that’s what we did.”