Holiday Treat: Helping Others : COUNTYWIDE : This Visitor Remembers Her Hosts

When Lori Rosser of Anaheim bid an emotional farewell to a group of children she had helped tutor and care for at a Tijuana orphanage last summer, she promised that she would never forget them.

Leaving the Orfanatorio Emmanuel had been heartbreaking. “The children all stood in line and hugged and kissed me goodby,” said Rosser, a Cal State Fullerton student. “They had been so warm and accepting. It tore my heart to know where these children have come from and what they’ve seen in their short lives.”

On Dec. 16, Rosser and colleagues from the Young Sportsman Club of Irvine will be bearing Christmas gifts of toys and clothing.

Rosser is a counselor with the club, which provides after-school child care and summer day camps for school-age children. Her stories about the children at the orphanage touched club owners Ron and Cecealia Kiino and club assistant director David Eick, who decided to sponsor the Christmas effort.

The orphanage houses about 30 children, ages 3 to 15, at a time, and it operates on donations from churches in the United States.

Rosser spent nine weeks at the orphanage last summer doing everything from cooking and cleaning to playing with the children and helping them with their studies, she said.

A few of the children have no relatives, she said, but many have parents who can not or will not care for them.

“We want to give the children a Christmas party and have a present for each child--something they just don’t have,” Rosser said.

Toys there are few. The children have only a few Barbie dolls, several cars and a Pac-Man game. “They do a lot of their own inventing,” Rosser said.

She made a trip to the orphanage last month to get wish lists: The girls wanted more Barbie dolls and clothing, and the boys wanted remote-controlled cars and Walkmans with headphones.

Eick, who has visited the orphanage himself, said, “It’s sad to see children need things that we just take for granted.”

Cecealia Kiino said she hopes that the project will not only mean something to the Tijuana children but also to the 120 children in her private day-care program.

“So many children today think only of me and mine,” Kiino said. “They don’t realize how many other children live in the world. Our society has become so fast-paced and so self-centered that it passes us by that there are other people in need.”