A longtime Las Vegas radio host, his toy drive is now in its 25th year, Chet Buchanan is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon joining you from atop a 30-foot scaffold in the parking lot of NV Energy off West Sahara.

Why?

Well, because this is the temporary home of our guest, 98.5 KLUC's Chet Buchanan.

Chet, welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

(Chet Buchanan) Welcome to my home.

-Yeah.

-You say temporary, but it's so funny.

I've lived almost nine months of my life on a scaffold just like this one, and we've been-- this is our 18th year here at NV Energy.

So this is oddly familiar and oddly comfortable.

-Hmm.

-You know, especially at this point.

In fact, that's where Toy Drive really starts for me is on that first day when I can finally get my feet on the ground, make my bed, put my stuff away.

Now it's go time.

-And that's what you have to explain to our viewers.

Why is this part of the toy drive, you spending 12 days in a row sleeping, going to the bathroom, waking up, hosting your radio show?

Why is that part of the toy drive?

-Because nobody else does it.

And that was really how the idea germinated in 1999, when-- new morning show in Las Vegas, wanted to make a splash, didn't want to do a stunt.

And I know that, and this gets dismissed a lot of time.

"It's a radio station stunt."

Maybe at the beginning, I could see you could make that case, I suppose.

And now it's just become the radio station is part of it.

That's how we help get the word out.

We have other partners, you know, and you come up here and help us to tell the story.

But it's so-- this is a community event.

And I'm almost offended if somebody goes, Oh, your stunt or Your little tree house or whatever.

This is the real deal, and we wanted to do something that would really make an impact.

And what's funny is at first, the very first year, it was going to be the-- we were going to do 9,800 toys.

That was the hope, 9,800 toys.

They show up with a banner that says 98K, and I'm like... -Uh, oh.

-That's 98 thousand!

You know that, right?

They're like, Yeah, I know.

It's 98K because, you know, the frequency.

And it was like, Oh, my goodness!

And to see where that-- what this thing has become is just, it's phenomenal.

-What amount of donations do you expect once this year wraps up?

-Jerry Lewis said it the best: "One more toy.

One more bike.

One more dollar in cash and gift cards."

So in this case, last year we did 42 trucks.

We stopped counting at 42.

It got out of-- that last day had gotten out of control.

And literally, it kind of got away from us a little bit.

And so trucks are subjective, because sometimes there's a lot of bikes and boxes that go on trucks.

Sometimes you'll have somebody that will show up with giant stuffed animals.

There are a million different factors that affect how full a truck is.

So-- and we can bat that around all day long.

It's not that important.

Honestly, it's not that important to me.

That number is not that important to me.

So 42 trucks, if we're in that neighborhood, great.

I'll feel good about it.

Last year, we had 8,814 bikes.

-Wow!

-I know, right?

That's not even the most we've ever had.

9,540 is the record from 2019, right before the pandemic.

I'm not crazy about this stuff right now.

Last year, $744,629 in cash and gift cards.

And like Jerry Lewis did back in the day: One more.

One more.

And I got to meet him before he passed away.

And he was like, "I watch you on TV.

It's tremendous.

One more.

One more."

-What did that mean to you?

-And I got one of his shirts.

It's everything.

And I'm a crier, dude.

I left the room.

Criss Angel introduced me to Jerry.

-Wow!

-Name-drop.

[laughter] -But Criss introduced me to Jerry because, he goes, "You two need to meet."

-Listening to you on the radio, at least yesterday, you talked about there is some anxiety that goes into this, a little bit of fear.

Is it related to are we gonna get enough donations, or is it related to I've got to live up here for 12 days.

-That back in the day was the big deal.

"Oh, 12 days..." Now?

No.

Now those numbers we just talked about a minute ago, "We only have 12 days!"

-Ah!

-"We only have 12 days!

How do you find-- where you find that here?

The flipside of that-- oh, and I'm more neurotic this year than I've ever been.

And I don't know why I can't control it.

I wish I could.

I think also because I have a weird-- I've had this weird epiphany that, you know, there's a lot of money in this town.

And what if, what if all of these years and over the-- you know, this being the 25th year.

So over the 24 years prior, we've raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million in toys, bikes, cash and gift cards.

-Wow!

-It's a solid-- I think that's a pretty solid ballpark figure.

I think it's a little more, but it's good.

What if we're failing miserably?

And what if we haven't done nearly what we could do?

So that's part of it.

Then on the other side of it, we've got 100 charities that come to us, and that's of our own-- it's of our own doing.

You know?

I mean, thank goodness for that.

It's a great problem to have, I guess, that if people are in need, they come to us.

-Mm-hmm.

-It's horrible that there's 100 charities and organizations that need our help.

It's awful.

But the fact of the matter is the fact of the matter.

So the idea that there's that-- and I take it as pressure, because we can't-- how?

How do you, how do you look-- and people talk about kids.

For me, it's parents.

Can you imagine as a parent having to look at your kid and go, Sorry, Santa's GPS didn't work this year.

It's soul sucking.

I don't have kids, but I can relate.

It's just it's such an easy thing to do.

It's such an easy, such an-- for me, it just seems like it's such a simple problem.

A lot of them are simple.

If you kind of put your back into it a little bit.

You know, little elbow grease, maybe.

But this is the one that we chose.

Trust me, I hear about it.

"Why don't you do 'hunger'?"

-Oh.

-There's other people that do hunger.

-Mm-hmm.

-And I suppose we could.

We do this.

"Why do you do bikes?

I don't see kids on bikes."

I don't know.

They seem to find their way.

You know last year, 8,814 of them.

I can tell you.

I watched the last one leave.

I watched it leave, Help of Southern Nevada, to go to a group in Amargosa Valley.

They took three of them.

They took the last three.

And the reason why they were the last ones is because they had to come all the way from Amargosa Valley to pick them up.

Yeah, there are a lot of different things we could do.

We chose this.

This is what we do.

-Well, tell me about your setup up here.

How do you get through these 12 days?

A tent.

A port-a-potty.

-Yeah.

The one nod to luxury four, five years ago, maybe.

I have a thing called a SHIFTPOD.

It's like a dome.

They use them at festivals.

So it's really supposed to keep the heat out.

It's reflective on the outside.

It's supposed to keep the heat out, not hold the heat in.

And trust me, it does not.

But I used to have a tent.

I used to sleep on an air mattress.

It's not great for my back.

You know, this is our 25th year.

I'm not quite as young as I used to be.

I'm not ready for the convalescent home yet.

But, um, yeah, so I've an actual bed because there's room for it in the SHIFTPOD.

But there's not a heat source up here.

I wear underlayers and-- -And you have slept in the port-a-potty, correct?

-Yeah.

-Because of the cold?

-Yeah.

That was where we realized there had to be a better way.

I think that was the thing.

The SHIFTPOD can withstand 100 mile an hour winds and is waterproof.

But yeah, the last year-- that was the birth of the legendary "Angry Tent."

The wind was 40, 50 miles an hour blowing across here, and the tent was going [sound effect].

And the door was open, and so it looked like a mouth.

And I'm like, "It's Angry Tent!"

And I did a video, and it went viral for Angry Tent.

"Roar!

Get off this scaffold, you idiot!

What are you doing?"

Everybody was like, This is great.

And it became a bit on the radio, and so everybody-- a lot of people remember Angry Tent.

But, yeah, there were, there have been some pretty miserable nights up here, snow, wind.

We should have left.

It was unsafe.

It was unsafe.

I should have left.

-And there are moments where I imagine you thought of coming down not because of the weather, perhaps, but significant life moments have happened to you up here.

Do you mind sharing one or two?

-Well, the-- I haven't touched the stairs in years.

NV Energy brings me up on a bucket thing.

We go way up, see the top of the building over there, which is really cool.

Everybody should do it.

You should see the city from here, some 70 feet up or however big, however tall those things are.

-In a bucket?

-In a bucket.

It's the greatest, especially if it's windy.

It's funny.

It shakes.

Then, no, but I haven't touched those stairs.

Years ago, probably it's probably close to 10 years ago now, a buddy of mine was bringing me dinner.

I don't want to drop another name, so I'm not gonna.

But he was bringing me dinner.

And he had just been in a car accident and was recovering from the car accident, and he'd had a concussion.

And he's coming up the stairs, which as you know, are kind of steep.

And he looks up, "Hey, man."

And I see his eyes roll back in his head.

I was like, Oh, no!

So I literally went down about four stairs, grabbed him by his shoulder, and that was the last time I've touched the stairs.

I don't-- If I leave anything up here when we're done, somebody has to come and get it because I just don't-- I don't touch the stairs.

Now, in Year 2, we were over at Boulevard Mall, Maryland Parkway and Twain.

My dog at the time--it was the first year we had stairs--he decided he didn't want to be up here anymore, and when I wasn't looking, jumped the baby gate and took off down the stairs and was running in the middle of Maryland Parkway.

Now, thank goodness it was fairly late at night, so there wasn't a ton of traffic.

And I panicked.

-Oh, I would too.

-I run down the stairs, and I'm literally, so like if this is the ground, my foot is hovering over.

I'm like, Okay.

And then I just yelled at him.

"BJ, get over here!"

He was like, huh?

Ran right past me up the stairs.

Never had a problem again.

Then, jeez, 2017, 2018, we lost-- we lost our dog.

And my, my wife's dog, she had him when she moved here.

You know, he used to ride in her backpack.

She would tell him-- he would go to bark, she would go, "Jeffrey, whisper."

And so he'd go [inaudible].

It was really-- man, we loved that dog.

And it was about 11:20.

So "about," yeah.

It was 11:20 at night.

And so the vet was at Trop and Durango.

So 10 minutes from here?

15 Maybe.

And I said, "I'm coming to you.

Don't move."

My wife was destroyed.

-Of course.

-"I'm coming to you, and we can go and do this.

No one will be the wiser.

No one will ever know."

And she said, If you do that-- She goes, "Instead, I will come to you."

She said, "If you were to leave, you could never look anybody in the eye ever again and tell them that you've not even touched those stairs."

And I went... And I'm emotional right now, you know, to talk about it, but she was so right.

She was so right, and it's important.

And you know what?

And people know.

And that's so-- to bring this full circle, we take it seriously.

We commit to this.

I can't ask other people to commit to bring one toy or one bike or $1 if I'm not willing to go the whole way.

-Chet Buchanan, you're gonna have to come on Nevada Week In Person again because we didn't get to talk about your walk with the Las Vegas Aces-- -We're out of time?

- --the Seattle Kraken, your long, long history here-- -No one cares about all of that.

-Your commitment to this toy drive is so admirable.

Runs through December 11, up until 10 a.m. on that Monday.

Thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thanks for having me.

-And for more interviews like this, go to vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.