New Clothes for Tattered Lives

The children stare from the other side of the bars.

The security gate opens and Albert and Jennifer Kwan, ages 7 and 8, follow their school counselor into a small house in a faded part of Hollywood, sticking close together.

Albert and Jennifer don’t completely understand why it’s hard for their parents to buy them clothes for school or why they are not allowed to play outside their house in East Los Angeles. Or why last month, while the Kwan family sat watching television, a random bullet fired by a teen-age gangster in the street crashed through the living room and wounded Grace Kwan, 10.

“She got shot,” Albert says, his helmet of black hair nodding, empty spaces showing between clenched baby teeth.

Albert and Jennifer go to John F. Kennedy Elementary School; they say the name of the school in unison when asked. They understand this: They have left school today to come to this cheerful room decorated with giant Disney characters, where a group of women are going to give them new clothes.

As Albert tries on a button-down shirt and gray slacks, his expression in the mirror sums up what Operation Schoolbell is about.

Each day during the school year, a group of San Fernando Valley housewives in jeans and sweat shirts drop off their children at school and head to Operation Schoolbell headquarters. The 24-year-old charity gives clothes to needy students who are referred by social workers from throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Funding comes from an annual Christmas benefit and donations.

“For some of the kids it’s the first time they’ve had new clothes,” volunteer Janna Cooley says.

It’s one thing to learn about the urban American Third World from headlines. It’s another to pick out gym shoes for a boy who has to miss school because he shares shoes with his brother, to scrounge a prom tuxedo for a teen-ager who later gets shot by gang members, to contract lice from a hug.

The do-good/feel-good atmosphere at Operation Schoolbell can be a little overwhelming. But on the whole, it’s an atmosphere in which a visitor’s cynicism fades rapidly.

And the volunteers’ street sense has grown. They are no longer shocked when they hear that some parents sell the “hygiene kits” of soap and toothbrushes the program gives to each child.

Just because people are poor doesn’t mean they are going to be uniformly noble and self-sacrificing. That’s about as misguided as expecting them to be uniformly dishonest and lazy. Learning to spot a hustle is an unfortunate but inherent part of the work.

“Yes, we get taken for a ride sometimes,” volunteer Stacey Hubert says. “But that’s all right. The need is there.”

More than 3,000 children received packages last year. The standard package also includes a new outfit consisting of jeans and a shirt (purchased from wholesalers), a sweat suit, socks and underwear.

On top of that, children get to pick out used clothes as available, many of them top-of-the-line designer items discarded by the children of volunteers. Volunteers say they bring their children from the San Fernando Valley on occasion so they can help out and learn what parents are talking about when they grumble about kids realizing how good they have it at home.

In the fitting room, 10-year-old Eberardo Castaneda removes tattered black Nikes, revealing discolored maroon socks. Eberardo has close-cropped hair and the kind of instinctive, engaging humor and good manners that make you want to smack the first obnoxious rich kid you see.

Eberardo speaks in Spanish and English: His family lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Bell; there are 14 kids and his two oldest sisters have babies, which makes 17 in the family counting his mother.

On the Castanedas’ information form for the program, next to the space for the whereabouts of their father is the word “Unknown.”

Eberardo’s three younger sisters have the dark eyes of Renaissance angels. Volunteers hover around tiny Griselda, 5, who tries on a pink down coat to the amusement of Sandi, 8. Nine-year-old Rosario crouches before a sumptuous three-story dollhouse, a castoff from a suburban household where reality more closely resembles such toys.

On the way out, each child gets a toy and a book. Eberardo scrutinizes a handful of plastic creatures in space suits from a well-stocked shelf.

“I’m trying to decide which one to take,” he says in Spanish.

He grins when he is told to take all five.

The Kwans take their turn, and Jennifer selects a yo-yo for her older sister. Grace has recovered rapidly from surgery to remove the bullet from her liver.

“She went back to school today,” Jennifer says.

Albert selects a yellow music box shaped like a portable radio. He turns the dial and listens to a tinny version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” over and over again.

Albert and Jennifer pack up their bundles with the help of the counselor. The music box keeps playing as the children say thank you and leave. The iron gate swings shut behind them.