Reseda ‘Santa’ Program Keeps Charity Near Home : Holidays: A high school attendance clerk runs a Christmas donations project that keeps an eye out for students whose families need aid.

For four months, Pat Wiley had been making her list, checking it twice and updating it even more. This week, she was finally able to lay it to rest.

“My job’s done,” she said, a note of relief sounding in her voice after a truck loaded with goods and goodies rumbled out of the Reseda High School parking lot, headed for its final delivery last week. “I don’t know how Santa does it in one night.”

An attendance clerk at the school, Wiley had been planning Reseda’s Secret Santa program since school began in August, coordinating an unusual donations project aimed at helping not the needy far away on Skid Row, but those closer to home.

Under Wiley’s direction, staff and students have pitched in time and money to help the families of nearly 50 youths who, they knew, could well be the boy they passed each day in the hall or the girl they admired for her straight-A grades.

Wiley and her co-workers put in dozens of hours sorting and wrapping, contacting families and delivering the gifts over the last two weeks.

“Every school has a canned food drive where the food goes downtown and goes to someone you don’t know,” Dean of Students Barbara Garry said. “Our thought was, why not help somebody who’s part of the Reseda family?”

Exactly, agreed Wiley, who graduated from Reseda 30 years ago, met her husband there and has worked in the attendance office for more than a decade.

She started the program rather haphazardly last year after hearing from a counselor of the squalid living conditions of some of the school’s 2,100 students. Galvanized, she collected donations of food and clothing and distributed them during the two weeks before Christmas.

This year, preparations began early. From her vantage point in the office, Wiley was on the lookout for months, mentally logging names of students whose families appeared most likely to be in need.

Some of the teen-agers were chronically absent, kept from school by family obligations or hardships. Others, she noticed, wore the same clothes to school every day or were shod in worn-out shoes, the toes curled from overuse. A few students poured out tales of hard times to teachers and counselors, and still others, Wiley knew, lived in foster families or in group homes throughout Los Angeles.

Even teachers played a part in identifying disadvantaged youths.

“We had both the English department and the English as a Second Language department have their kids write journals,” Wiley said. “Some of the journals showed kids who were in need.”

Wiley contacted the students and their families starting in late October, tactfully asking if they needed help, compiling lists of names of family members, their ages, clothing sizes, any secret Christmas wishes. One unemployed mother was struggling to raise eight children ranging in age from 2 to 17. Another parent was a blind man single-handedly trying to raise two teen-agers.

With 47 families on the list--each assigned a number and kept anonymous--Wiley appealed for volunteers to “adopt” them by buying each family member an article of clothing and a personal gift, as well as enough food for a substantial Christmas dinner. Teachers, administrators, office workers, a few classes and student clubs responded, donating toys, toiletries, frozen turkeys, hundreds of pounds of canned goods, candy, even free movie passes and gift certificates to record stores.

“Some of the classes asked me questions like, ‘We have Family 24. Does the 2-year-old still wear diapers?’ Or, ‘Does the mom like sweaters or jackets?’ ” Wiley recalled with a laugh. “So they got very particular gifts.”

Like one 16-year-old boy, a native of Iran, who had pined for a personal computer.

“I wanted one, but I didn’t think they would get it for me,” the youth said. “It’s too expensive.”

Wiley thought so too--until a teacher hauled in a computer that he confessed to never using. It seemed the handiwork of St. Nicholas himself, to both an open-mouthed Wiley and the elated youth.

“I couldn’t believe it,” the boy said, smiling as he recalled the moment he opened his gift.

Another boy, who lives in a one-bedroom apartment with his mother and two brothers, told of how his mother reacted when school officials knocked on the door and presented her with boxes of food and a passel of gift-wrapped toys. She wept.

“My mom was happy because the night before, there was nothing to eat--absolutely nothing,” said the boy, who arrived from El Salvador five months ago. “My mom has never been that happy.”

Another woman asked Assistant Principal Dimitri Vadetzky, who delivered the gifts in a borrowed mini-van, to pray with her to give thanks for the Christmas that might not have been. “Tears were streaming down her face,” he said, “and down my face.”

For Wiley, organizing the Secret Santa program was exhausting, but the 46-year-old Van Nuys resident said she’ll coordinate it again next year--and with more families, if she can.

“I have a lot to be grateful for,” said Wiley, who has survived three bouts with cancer. “Life’s a pay-back, and I need to pay back what everyone’s done for me.”