Toy Joy : Firemen Carry Santa’s Bag of Cheer to Blythe Street Children

When four fire trucks, lights flashing and sirens whooping, roared down Blythe Street just west of the Van Nuys General Motors plant Saturday evening, the first reaction of many residents of the impoverished block was that there was a fire or that somebody was hurt.

But as the convoy pulled to the curb, Santa Claus and three “elves” piled out of a nondescript van sandwiched between two of the big trucks.

“All the children come down for toys,” boomed the amplified voice of the Santa, a Sherman Oaks retiree named Abel Stone, wielding a megaphone in one hand and a teddy bear in the other. It took about 10 seconds for a group of children playing in front of a shabby apartment building to catch on.

They started an impromptu dance as bulging trash bags in the van began to disgorge a flood of free toys.

It was the last stop of the day for the exhausted Santa and his elves, all of whom work at Valley Stationers, a Van Nuys firm that, for the second year in a row, collected more than 1,500 toys to donate to the city’s poor.

Stone and the store owner, Paul Rycus, a flush-faced, fast-talking, 6-foot elf, were joined by the task force from Los Angeles Fire Department Station 39 after distributing toys earlier in the day at two spots in South Los Angeles.

The overwhelmed Santa--facing a fast-growing sea of grasping hands--was just one of many philanthropists who distributed toys, meals and clothing to the poor and homeless across Los Angeles on Saturday. But, Stone said, if any block needed such largess, it was Blythe Street.

Local police know Blythe Street, between Van Nuys Boulevard and Willis Avenue, as a drug “supermarket.” The dilapidated, overcrowded apartments produce one of the area’s highest rates of communicable diseases, according to county health officials, but because many of the residents are illegal aliens, they do not seek treatment.

“It’s a tough place to live, especially for the children,” said Pat Cano, a resident of the block who stood back and watched the festivities. “I usually don’t see too many smiles here,” he said.

The children Saturday evening all wore smiles as they clutched “Miss Amanda” plastic jewelry sets, toy trucks, stuffed animals and plastic wristwatches.

Many of the toys were donated by Valley Stationers’ suppliers, Rycus said, and others were bought by Stone and the shop’s employees. “We bought five gross of plastic wristwatches the other day,” he said, as he passed an armful of toys from the back of the van.

Gleeful Chaos

Several women carrying babies swaddled in hand-knitted blankets stood on the curb and watched as firefighters lamely tried to organize a milling mass of about 70 children into a line.

Firefighter Mike Rojas stood on the roof of the ladder truck’s cab, telling the children in Spanish to take only one toy and not to crowd.

“Quick. Give me a boy toy,” Stone said, reaching blindly behind his back while Rycus searched desperately through a trash bag. Rycus passed him a pencil set.

“It is a good surprise” to see Santa on Blythe Street, said one woman, who would not give her name but said the 15-day-old girl she cradled in her arms was Evelyn Vanessa.