Trinity Baptist Church hosted an event on Dec. 5 in an attempt to pass about 120 fruit trees to those within the Downey community and teach them to care after trees and the environment.

The trees were stored in a back truck and to redeem one, people had to provide their name and address.

The event was supposed to start at 5 p.m.; however, it started a little bit earlier. As a result, some of the people that attended at 5 p.m. complained because the peach trees were almost gone when they showed up.

Ernesto Jimenez, 19 years old, assisted the event because he saw the event in a Facebook post.

When asked why he decided to attend, he said the following:

“Because I like trees a lot and having a fruit tree in my house would be great. I would not go to the store to buy fruit anymore,” Jimenez said.

When asked which fruit tree he decided to grab, he replied, “I chose the apple tree because it was the only one there [and] I was a little late here.”

He added, “I would have liked to have the peach tree.”

Brian Medina, 26, was one of the helpers of the event, who said they gave around 120 trees in total.

“The purpose of giving trees for free is for people to know the importance of knowing how to care for a tree and how important it is for the environment,” Medina stated.

Lana Wahlquist,40, works at the theater department at Cerritos College. She decided to assist in the event because she loves “having fruit trees at my backyard and because I live here in Downey.”

Wahlquist also said as a fact that fruit trees are expensive to buy.

She decided to get a tree for her friend that unfortunately is in the hospital.

She stated, “My friends love fruit trees and you just caught me putting the tree in his back yard and hopefully he can be home soon and enjoy his tree. We got a peach and my friend got a red baron peach.”

The next event will be located in the city of Norwalk in two weeks.