‘We just came and got it because we were asked to.’

The City of Agoura Hills and the senior citizens’ club of the same name worked together last week to do their part in the distribution of federal surplus food to the needy.

The food comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which buys it when the producers have so much that they can’t break even selling it.

The government distributes the food to schools, hospitals, prisons and child-care centers. In the past several years food has been in such supply that there is still more to go around after all that.

So it is sent through a complex distribution system to the needy.

In the Valley, the Los Angeles County Community Service office in Pacoima hands out food every four months to community organizations for giveaways.

On Thursday, 37,000 people collected five-pound blocks of cheese at about 50 locations.

I was lured to the Agoura Hills giveaway because of its location in the Lake Lindero Country Club.

Agoura Hills, a young and prosperous municipality straddling the Ventura Freeway in that corridor of booming growth between Woodland Hills and Thousand Oaks, isn’t exactly an enclave of the homeless and destitute.

According to census statistics updated to 1985, median household income in the city’s ZIP code is almost $12,000 higher than that of Beverly Hills.

Neither is the Lake Lindero Country Club exactly the Conejo Valley counterpart of the Midnight Rescue Mission.

In fairness, the name could give the wrong impression. As country clubs go, Lake Lindero’s is rather homely. It consists of a stucco building with sliding aluminum and glass doors looking out on a swimming pool and golf course. In the main hall some of the wallpaper has peeled, yielding a casual atmosphere that is not apparently distasteful to members of the Agoura Hills Senior Citizens’ Club, which meets there.

The country club isn’t in walking range of many homes, so its parking lot filled quickly Thursday as people drove in to get their cheese. Most of them were elderly. Few, if any, seemed poor.

They walked down an arched arcade and met a woman at the door who handed each a card with a number on it.

The woman instructed each one to take the card to a bank of tables where several women were asking for proof of eligibility.

To be eligible, one of the women said, a person had to be of low income, unemployed, disabled or elderly.

Officials of the food distribution program said that, actually, those rules have been changed. Now a low income is the only criterion. However, the intake workers didn’t seem aware of that.

Most of those in line showed Medicare cards as proof of age. They were were marked down on a list as “Sr.,” for senior.

By 10 a.m. the main hall was buzzing with the voices of perhaps 100 people.

A small, round man in a short-sleeved shirt introduced himself as Ike Bordofsky, president of the senior citizens’ club. He urged everyone who had not already done so to join up. Thanks to the help of the city, he said, the country club and all its amenities were available to members.

“That’s all for $2,” Bordofsky said.

Next, a handsome, plainclothes officer from the Malibu Sheriff’s Station gave a short description of the department’s Vial of Life kit, which he was going to hand out with each block of cheese.

The kit contained a medical questionnaire, an empty plastic pillbox and a red Vial of Life sticker in the shape of a sheriff’s badge. He explained that an elderly person writes down emergency medical information, folds the completed form into the vial and puts it in the refrigerator at home. The sticker, attached to the refrigerator door, is to alert paramedics that the information is there.

Finally, Bordofsky began to call off numbers. One by one, people exchanged their cards for the bag containing the cheese and the kit.

Most went immediately back to their cars.

Several said they appreciated the food.

“Well, yes,” one gray-haired woman said. “Especially when you’re a pensioner and a Social Securiter.”

But that view wasn’t unanimous.

“I don’t need it,” a man who appeared to be an athletic 60 said, depositing his cheese in the trunk of his Ford Tempo. “We just came and got it because we were asked to. They want to get rid of it.”

He talked freely but declined to give his name.

“A lot of the people will kill me if I knock their cheese off,” he said.

He said he stayed away from the first giveaway.

“I felt silly as hell walking in here,” he said. “Not anymore. Everyone else does it. Here’s a fellow driving up in his brand new Chrysler driving up to get his CARE package.”

He was wrong. The fellow in the Chrysler flopped a pair of golf shoes onto the pavement and pulled his clubs out of the rear seat.

Back inside, only a few people were waiting. No. 117 was being called. Bordofsky, confronted with the apparent incongruity of the event, conceded without argument or shame.

“I agree with you,” he said. “But there are needy in this area. We have an awful lot of seniors in this area. To get them out of their houses is a hard thing to do.”

Then he delivered the coup de grace:

“Hell, it’s theirs,” he said. “They paid for it. One way or another, they paid for it.”