Stock for Stockings : Suppliers’ Leftovers to Brighten Foster Children’s Christmas

The grown-ups’ stockrooms were full. The kids’ stockings were empty.

So an anonymous group of Los Angeles gift shop suppliers has taken steps to even things out in the week before Christmas.

The manufacturers have rounded up thousands of unsold gift items from their warehouse shelves and commissioned groups of schoolchildren to wrap them as personal holiday gifts for other youngsters.

On Wednesday, 5,000 gaily decorated packages bearing handwritten holiday wishes were turned over to officials for delivery to foster children throughout Los Angeles County.

For some of the children, who have been placed in temporary homes as an escape from abusive or neglectful parents, the gifts could be all they find under the Christmas tree next Wednesday.

“Sometimes there’s nobody to remember the children at the holidays if the community doesn’t. It’s illegal for us to buy gifts with public dollars,” said Susan Gonsalves, supervisor of volunteer services for the county Department of Children’s Services. “This is wonderful.”

The idea for gift sellers to become gift givers came to manufacturer Marcia Miller of Mar Vista a month ago. She was dismayed at the unsold merchandise piled on the shelves of her company’s Inglewood warehouse.

“Here was all this stuff collecting dust,” Miller said, “and all around us were children who are abused and homeless.”

Miller suspected that with the recession continuing, many of her competitors had the same problem with odd boxes of unsold and discontinued items. The goods were too good to throw away. But there wasn’t enough of it to sell in bulk to close-out stores.

Her hunch was correct, Miller discovered, when she called 15 of her rivals to invite them to contribute. Things fell into place quickly after that.

Children’s Services administrators were eager to accept the gifts. In some years, they have only received holiday gift donations for about half of the 50,000 youngsters under their supervision. Along with foster children, the agency monitors the welfare of children felt to be at risk of abuse who are living with their own families.

Two Westside schools where Miller’s children are students agreed to supply young gift wrappers to box the toys, stationery items and novelty gifts. Several Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops from the Woodland Hills area also were recruited.

The paper company that supplies Miller’s firm donated bags for the children to decorate and fill with gifts. The trucking company that ships her firm’s products volunteered to transport the finished gift bags and boxes.

Before 250 pupils at Castle Heights Elementary School and another 300 at Palms Junior High School sat down to wrap the gifts, their teachers wrapped the concept of gift giving into the day’s lesson plan.

“I want everybody to have presents. I feel bad that some people won’t get any,” said third-grader Yvonne Lantry as she drew a Yule wreath on one side of a bag and a Hanukkah menorah on the other. When it was finished, she filled it with a small sewing kit, a writing tablet and a water squeeze bottle.

First-grader Sheldon Van Haam, 6, said his decorated bag contained the first gift he had ever wrapped. “At home my daddy wraps my Christmas presents for me,” he said.

“Foster people will get this,” Sheldon added. “They’re people who don’t have homes for Santa to visit.”

Lana Brody, assistant principal at Palms Junior High School, said she was reluctant when the gift wrapping project was first suggested. But the children’s enthusiasm changed her mind.

“This turned out to be the best lesson of the year for them. It was a wonderful project,” she said.

“It touched a lot of people.”