RETAIL/TOURISM

Blanket response: Bernard Abrams, chairman and founder of Three D Bed & Bath, and his son, Donald Lee Abrams, president of the 27-store chain, aren’t letting Orange County’s dismal response to their plea for blankets for the homeless get them down.

Only 32 used blankets had been dropped off at Three D’s three Orange County stores by Friday--five days after the Abrams ran an ad seeking county residents’ help--so they’ve decided to donate 500 new blankets from their Costa Mesa-based company.

The blankets will be given to three Orange County social service organizations for the homeless, Donald Abrams said Friday.

The blankets have a retail value of about $5,000, he said.

The Abrams spent $4,000 for a full-page advertisement in an Orange County newspaper Sunday. The ad, which showed a photograph of an elderly homeless man asleep on a park bench, asked people to gather up their old blankets and bring them to Three D stores so they could be donated to local shelters.

As an added incentive, a 20% discount was offered on purchases of new blankets to anyone who brought in an old one.

The blankets have not exactly been flooding in.

The Times reported Thursday that only 23 blankets had been received by the Three D stores in Irvine, Tustin and Westminster. On Friday, nine more came in.

Abrams said the company could only run the ad one time because of the expense. It is possible, he said, that many people forgot about or never saw it.

“Rather than spend more money on another ad,” he said, “we decided to donate new blankets to make sure that the needs of the homeless will be fulfilled.”

The blankets will be delivered at noon today to Orangecoast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa; Cover Wings, a charity organization in Anaheim, and LEAP, a division of the Orange County Child Abuse Council in Santa Ana.