Hundreds Wait for Thanksgiving in a Box : Charity: Orange County Rescue Mission offers holiday basics for about 400 needy people who stood in line for several hours.

Ida Jones was in a quandary: The 68-year-old retiree had four grandchildren visiting from out of town but no money on her Social Security income to buy turkey and the trimmings for Thanksgiving.

Then she heard about the turkey dinner giveaway at the Orange County Rescue Mission and her problem was solved. Wednesday morning, she showed up to claim her share.

“I just wanted to fix some turkey and dressing for the kids,” a smiling Jones said as she waited for a ride home with her box of food. “You know how kids are.”

Jones was one of about 400 people who stood in a block-long line for up to four hours Wednesday to claim the holiday food box for their families. All had stood in equally long lines at the mission last week to get tokens making them eligible for a care box. Eligibility was limited to local families in need, but there was at least one reported case of a transient taking his box and selling it for $5 on the street.

The mission on West Walnut Street in Santa Ana is in its 26th year of providing free Thanksgiving dinners to families.

John F. Lands, mission executive director, said the giveaway has grown to match the demand. Five years ago, he said, the mission was handing out 50 boxes of food. Next year, he predicted, the number would top 600. The shelter also prepares a Thanksgiving Day dinner for the homeless and today they expect as many as 3,000 to show up.

The increasing turnout of destitute families shows there is a growing problem of poverty in Orange County, Lands said.

Many people interviewed at the mission Wednesday said that illness and other bad luck had recently thrust them into the ranks of the unemployed, forcing them to accept handouts.

“I’m really happy that we’ve got this giveaway because we wouldn’t have had a dinner otherwise,” said a 43-year-old mother of two young daughters who said she lost her job as a card dealer after she was injured in a traffic accident.

But poverty was no stranger to many others waiting in line. A sizable number were Latino immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many of whom work at minimum-wage jobs or live with friends and relatives.

At the head of the line was Juanita Carranza, a 60-year-old El Salvadoran immigrant who said she is caring for her seven young grandchildren whose mother died in childbirth last spring. Carranza and her husband, who is too old to work, received a box containing a stuffed turkey, a loaf of bread, canned beets, and stew and mashed potato mix.

Carranza, who said she had helped bring in money as a housecleaner until an automobile accident sidelined her six months ago, was upbeat as the holiday approached.

“America is great!” she said, beaming. “We have liberty, expression and everything.”

Carranza said that she would be putting her turkey in the oven this morning so that Thanksgiving dinner could be ready by early afternoon. Although it is not a holiday in her native land, she said her grandchildren, ages 4 through 13, were born in this country and look forward to Thanksgiving Day.

“This is a big day,” she said.

The sight of so many people gathered outside the rescue mission attracted others who got in line without tokens for a free care box. And with 75 no-shows among those deemed eligible, the mission did hand out boxes to late-comers such as Maria Ilveo Fuentes, 33, an El Salvadoran immigrant who arrived in this country with her six children only last month.

Fuentes, an electronics-plant worker from the capital city of San Salvador, said she had to pay a smuggler $300 for herself and each of her children to cross the U.S.-Mexican border at Tijuana.

As a result, she said, “I arrived here with no money.”

On hand for crowd control were a handful of orange-shirted mission workers such as Roy Vincent, who made sure no one tried to cut in line or start fights.

Vincent and the others said the crowd was peaceable, with only a few instances of attempted line-bucking. After the boxes had been handed out, Vincent shook his head at a throng of about two dozen people without tokens who had waited in hopes of getting food.

“It’s kind of a shame that we can’t give everybody a meal,” Vincent said. “Some of these people really, really need it.”