Charity Becomes Haberdashery for Poor School Kids

Her eyes shyly downcast, fourth-grader Claudia Lima wordlessly accepted the bright blue backpack--the first one she had ever owned--from the worker at the Orange County Rescue Mission.

Her demeanor lightened considerably, however, when she was asked how she felt about the cache of free school supplies and clothes she carried.

“It feels good,” she blurted before her mother whisked her away into a crowd of other families waiting patiently in the parking lot of the privately funded rescue mission.

Claudia and more than 700 other people were on hand Saturday morning to witness the beginning of a tradition at the mission, which normally caters to single homeless men.

With the help of several local churches, Disneyland and the Newport Beach-based Fieldstone Co., the mission launched its first Back to School Clothing and Supply Giveaway on West Walnut Street.

For almost three hours, hundreds of impoverished children and parents stood in a line that wrapped almost around the brick building for a chance to pick through the tables of new and used clothes, boxes of pencils, stacks of notebooks and bags of books and crayons.

The items, workers hoped, will help the children be more prepared and less awkward in school.

“Some of these kids have never had any new things in their lives,” said James Palmer, a spokesman for the 27-year-old mission. “A lot of what they are wearing are fourth or fifth generation.”

Behind Claudia, Margarita Garcia, 36, a native of Tijuana, was combing through a pile of socks and shorts for her daughter’s size.

The mother of four children, Garcia said she is confined to the house while her husband struggles to make ends meet as a truck driver.

“This is good for us,” she said. “We never have enough money.”

Several volunteers who spent the day helping mission workers knew well the plight of the poor families who stood in the long line.

One of them was John Wilson, 38, who has been living since January at the mission. Wiping sweat from his brow as he tried to keep the table in front of him stocked with new clothes, Wilson cheerfully tried to pronounce the few Spanish words he knew to direct parents to take just one item of clothes for each member of the family.

“It gives me great satisfaction to be able to be participating in the ministry that Christ had while he was on this earth,” said Wilson, who has been diagnosed with the virus for acquired immune deficiency syndrome from sharing a contaminated needle while a heroin addict.

“As long as we all can work together as one, the angels are singing up in heaven,” he said.

Despite his illness, “this makes me think twice about how fortunate I am,” Wilson said. “I can be back out on the streets or in a wheelchair. I share in their (the children’s) feelings, their hunger, their needs.”

Indeed, mission director John Lands said, using the homeless men who regularly stay at the mission to help with the school supply giveaway is a way to build much-needed self-esteem.

“These guys have been on the streets,” Lands said. “They know what it’s like. It’s not enough to clothe and feed them (the homeless men). They have to be changed spiritually.”

Lands said he was pleasantly surprised by the larger-than-expected turnout, but he regretted that the mission had run out of many items long before all the people had filed past the tables.

“We expected 150, 200 people, tops,” Lands said. “We can’t believe the number of people who came out.”

Volunteer Laurie Sargent, 41--a secretary for the Fieldstone Co., who donated pencils, paper and her time on Saturday--said she was struck by the poverty that she witnessed.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she asked as she arranged pairs of pants that were piled on a folding table. “It’s terrible. I didn’t realize that there was so many people in need.”