PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Philadelphia esports gamer with a big following is using his wins online to help less fortunate children have a winning Christmas.
Alex "Destroy" Benabe is a professional Call of Duty player. The gamer from Northeast Philadelphia has amassed quite the following on the streaming service Twitch, where people can tune in to watch him play.
"I’m a content creator with almost 400,000 followers on the platform," he said.
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During the holiday season, Benabe is using that platform to get gifts for kids in the Toys for Tots program.
He did that by collecting donations while he played in and streamed video game tournaments.
"I just started sharing with my community and letting them know we’re raising money for a good cause, and a lot of my community came together to support," he said.
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Benabe said they raised $21,000, something that for him was all in a day's work.
"We were able to do that in 12, 13 hours," he explained.
Benabe added that he went to 5 Below with the money he raised, and purchased everything from dolls and board games to socks and shirts.
"Being able to raise money for a really, really good cause like kids having toys for Christmas," he said, "makes it even better."
