Opening Hearts and Gifts : Christmas: Pacifica High students adopt handicapped and underprivileged kids for a holiday that brings smiles all around.

Pacifica High School senior Jerome Bearbower had trouble Wednesday keeping track of his adopted child for the day, but he had no trouble finding the true meaning of Christmas.

Bearbower, 17, was one of the 260 Pacifica seniors who participated in the school’s annual Adopt a Child program, a two-hour party for mentally handicapped and underprivileged children in which the high school students bring Christmas gifts that the tykes might not otherwise have received.

“Kids from our school get cars for Christmas,” Bearbower said as he watched Daniel, a mentally handicapped youngster, scoot away with his brand-new Turbo Eagle remote-control toy car. “These kids get a little $5 toy and they’re . . . like, look at him, he’s happy.”

“Happy” was the catchword of the morning as the seniors smiled, laughed and giggled along with their adopted children--90 kindergartners from Clinton Elementary School, and 65 mentally disabled children from Mendenhall Special Education School, neighboring campuses in Garden Grove.

At 9:30 a.m., Pacifica’s gymnasium was transformed into a raucous playground for both little kids and big teen-agers. The seniors beamed as they presented each child with candy and four new toys, contributed by the Pacifica student body.

Many of the small children were shy at first, in awe of the bigger kids, the glistening Christmas tree, the cheery Christmas music blasted over loudspeakers, Santa Claus (Pacifica athletic director George Terlaak, and, most of all, the vast array of brightly wrapped packages.

While many of Pacifica’s students will enjoy Christmas in prosperous homes, most of the Clinton and Mendenhall kids are from low-income households in the Buena-Clinton area. For many of them, the gifts they received yesterday will be the only ones they’ll see this Christmas.

“This is it, this is their Christmas,” said Melinda Culwell, a teacher at Mendenhall.

“We have two boys here that I’ve never seen smile before,” added Barbara Batson, principal of both Clinton and Mendenhall. “I just could not believe their faces--they were absolutely ecstatic. That was the best thing I saw today, those two boys smiling.”

Smiles were evident everywhere as the youngsters became more comfortable with, and more attached to, their teen-age hosts.

Toy rubber footballs soared through the air, and the gym’s basketball hoops fast became receptacles for a wide variety of foam, rubber and miniature balls. The hardwood floors were slick with soap from bubbles and scuffed by dozens of toy wheels on remote-controlled cars zipping around.

Batson said the Pacifica students were so generous that the Garden Grove Unified School District sent along an empty bus to haul the gifts back to Clinton and Mendenhall. About 1,000 gifts were donated--too many to distribute solely to Clinton and Mendenhall students. The overflow will be handed out to students at Riverdale Elementary school, according to Pacifica Principal Don Wise.

While the gifts were important to the youngsters, the companionship with the teens was invaluable, for both the elementary and high school students. Many of the teens carried their new young friends in their arms, holding them until they were taken to the buses for the trip to their schools.

“A lot of these children don’t have a father in the home or an older brother, and these high school boys are playing basketball with them and tossing footballs,” Batson said. “I think some of the high school kids get more out of this than they do.”

Pacifica seniors Cheryl Rambo and Jennifer Palczewski both agreed.

“They’re getting presents, but they’re giving us a bigger present,” Palczewski said as she and Rambo watched their adopted child, Michael, a 7-year-old with Down’s syndrome, rub his hands together before tearing into his gifts. “They get the toys, but we get the memories.”

Wise, the high school principal who started the Adopt a Child program six years ago, said those memories are among the reasons why the gift-giving party always comes out No. 1 in an annual survey of student likes and dislikes.

“You’ll find many of the students will be in tears as they put their kids on the bus,” he said. Sure enough, the morning ended with lots of sad farewells and more than a few moist eyes.