Helping Hands : Volunteers: About 1,200 Valley workers assist United Way in sprucing up agencies’ facilities during Community Care Day.

They swarmed about their work like a team of Navy Seabees.

One bare-chested, grimacing man in a camouflage hat walloped an overgrowth of hedges down to size with power shears. A 50ish woman stood on her tiptoes on the kitchen countertop scrubbing shelves. A young girl sanded the deck. An athletic man with a contractor’s belt leaned over the edge of the roof to nail in new fascia board.

It was all part of Community Care Day on Saturday, an annual volunteer extravaganza put on by United Way’s North Angeles Region. The program, in its third year, matches employees from San Fernando Valley companies with charitable agencies that need maintenance and repair.

In a quick three hours Saturday these workers had restored a respectable sheen to a tired little house on Whitsett Avenue in North Hollywood. The house had recently been purchased by Activities for Retarded Children as a future training center and residence, where the agency will board clients for short spells to give their parents free time.

But the agency had neither the money nor staff to begin fixing up the house.

“It’s going to cost us $4,750 to put up a wrought-iron fence,” said Executive Director Dixie Henrickson, even though a board member provided the materials. “We couldn’t do this ourselves.”

This year, about 1,200 employees of 41 companies gave up half a day to do work in their community. In addition, two other United Way regions initiated Community Care Days this year, bringing out about 600 people in the Westside and Harbor/Southeast areas.

The Valley event began with an 8 a.m. breakfast and pep talk outside the Los Angeles Times’ San Fernando Valley Plant in Chatsworth. Then, volunteers dispersed in their cars to 52 facilities of United Way agencies in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

In teams ranging from three to 70, they dusted, scrubbed, lifted, hammered, sawed and painted.

They restocked disaster supplies at the American Red Cross in Glendale, painted equipment and mended books and toys at the Burbank Family YMCA, cleaned classrooms and made repairs at Pacoima Elementary School, organized a food pantry and landscaped at the Home Visitation Center in Pacoima and planted a garden at the Samuel Dixon Family Health Center.

At the facility of Activities for Retarded Children, 32 Texaco employees and family members were joined by 35 women from the Volunteer League of the San Fernando Valley and their husbands and children.

Together, they gave the once-over to a pair of houses owned by the 24-year-old agency, which provides educational, therapeutic and social services to about 120 children.

The Volunteer League women scrubbed down a two-story house that has served as the agency’s office and activities center for seven years. Across the street, the Texaco group handled heavier tasks. They painted railings and a guest room, replaced rotting wood and broken windows and pruned enough runaway shrubs to fill about two dozen trash bags.

The laborers said they sacrificed their own chores at homes, time with their families and relaxation to do the work.

Giving time to community projects is a duty, they said.

“I feel as a corporate citizen it’s my responsibility to give back a little bit of what the community has given to us,” said Howard Pierce, personnel and quality coordinator at Texaco. Pierce said his interest was even greater because he has a 32-year-old daughter with Down’s syndrome and he is a heart transplant recipient.

“I’m 55, my heart’s 27. I got the heart of a 19-year-old man,” he said. “When you get nine more years of life, you feel like you ought to give it to somebody other than yourself.”

The workers looked like saviors to Henrickson, who flitted from house to house throughout the morning offering encouragement and praise.

“People are really great,” she said. “They’re kind.”