FULLERTON : City Worker Collects Items for Homeless

Without fanfare or hype, city employee Dennis Hittle each year collects a small truckload of food, clothing and toiletries to give to the homeless at Christmas.

The donors are fellow city employees who drop canned food and clothing into one of the three stainless-steel trash cans that Hittle sets up at City Hall, the police station and the city yard. The cans have a homey touch, being decorated with homemade signs and colored bows.

“It’s almost become a custom and tradition here,” said Robert Savage, director of the city maintenance service department, where Hittle, 48, has worked for 23 years. “People know that every year, Dennis is going to set his trash cans up.”

This is the fifth year for Hittle’s project. On Saturday, he and a group of co-workers will drive to downtown Los Angeles to distribute the items to the people at the Union Rescue Mission.

Hittle chose the mission, he said, because it tries to care for the spirit as well as the body. He had visited the mission several years ago with a friend and decided then that the people there could use some extra help from individuals.

“It’s something we as city employees can do,” Hittle said. “You really don’t have to wait for an organization to start it.”

Hittle set up his first can at the city yard in 1984 after receiving permission from his supervisor.

“We got approval to do this at the city yard, but I thought, ‘why not go citywide?’ ” Hittle said. “So I went to talk to the city manager.” He admitted to having been a little nervous about approaching the city manager.

But he needn’t have. City Manager William C. Winter said: “I thought it was a really fine effort by a city employee who would want to do something like that on his own. . . . It’s a morale booster. He sets an example for other city employees.”