SAN JOSE — Electric toy cars and scooters intended as Christmas presents for poor children were handed out instead to dozens of Santa Clara County employees — and the county executive’s office says they don’t need to return them.

Some longtime county officials grew concerned Thursday upon learning of the impromptu toy distribution — which involved individual toys worth, in some cases, hundreds of dollars each handed out from the backs of trucks in a parking lot near the county building. One, County Assessor Larry Stone, advised his employees not to keep them.

But County Executive Jeff Smith’s office quickly put out the word that returning the toys was unnecessary.

“Jeff Smith is fine with the Assessor’s Office sending out a note to your employees about returning the toys,” Susana Perez-Hernandez, a manager in Smith’s office, wrote in an email Thursday. “However the other County Depts. are being told not to request this of their staff. It is not considered a gift of public funds.”

Why the toys were given to county employees rather than the needy children that donor Dynacraft Wheels intended was lost in a swirl of claims and counterclaims Friday. Nor is it clear what the employees believed they were supposed to do with the toys.

Smith insisted that county employees who took the toys — including Spider-Man dune buggies, CareBears buggies and Hello Kitty electric scooters that retail for more than $200 — understood they needed to donate them to a nonprofit or church. But he could provide no documentation that workers were told to donate them.

Stone called Smith’s assertion “complete nonsense” and said the workers believed the gifts were theirs to keep.

“No county employee took the toys to give to a nonprofit organization,” Stone said.

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It’s unclear how many toys ended up in the wrong hands, but Dynacraft Wheels apparently donated 10,000. Chris Wilder, CEO of the Valley Medical Center Foundation, said Dynacraft — a toy company that has donated bikes to his organization in the past — called two weeks ago to say they wanted to donate “several thousand” toys this year.

But Wilder said the donation was “too large” for his organization to process. So he called Steve Preminger, a special assistant to Smith, because he knew Preminger organizes a toy giveaway for low-income families at the county fairgrounds each year.

Several trucks delivering the toys ended up Wednesday and Thursday at the old San Jose City Hall behind the county administration building at Hedding and First streets. Preminger said county employees walking to their cars from work saw the toys being unloaded from the truck and asked him about it. Preminger said he personally told at least a few employees they could pick up the toys if they promised to donate them to charity.

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County workers were asked to put their names, phone numbers and how many toys they took on a list of recipients, he said. But that list didn’t ask which nonprofit they planned to donate the toys to. Preminger refused to provide a copy of the list.

“I don’t want people to be interrogated,” Preminger said. “I don’t want people to think they did something wrong.”

Stone disputed Preminger’s account and said the county workers “learned of this gift through word-of-mouth and were told they were being made available to employees.”

Preminger said about two dozen county workers picked up the gifts; Stone said it was 30 to 50.

Smith acknowledged the county has no way of knowing whether the employees donated the gifts or kept them for themselves.

“It’s a trust thing,” said Smith, who oversees an organization, that like all county governments in California, administers social welfare programs for the needy. “We hope that they’re doing the right thing. We basically have to believe people when they say they want to take them for kids who are underserved. We don’t treat our employees like they’re criminals.”

Wilder said he would be “disappointed” if county workers who aren’t in need kept the gifts. “Our intention was these toys would go to families that need it,” Wilder said.

Officials with Dynacraft Wheels were not available for comment.

Stone, who noticed the truck giving out the toys to county workers Thursday morning, characterized the distribution of the gifts to county workers as a mistake. He assured any staff who picked up the gifts they weren’t to blame and could return them no questions asked. By Friday afternoon, a cubicle in his office began filling up with the returned gifts.

Stone said he was stunned by the county executive office’s emailed response and believes the county has a moral obligation to do the right thing.

“The county executive was looking at it from a legal standpoint, and I was looking at it from the ‘do the right thing,'” Stone said Friday. “There are children at Christmas who aren’t going to receive toys and this was a source of toys for needy kids. Morally, we have to do the right thing.”