Making a Difference in Your Community : Who Will Carry the Pumpkins?

An invasion is being planned. Thirty tons of pumpkins will descend on the people of Calabasas a week before Halloween. It’s a masterful blueprint, a flawless plan, but for one small detail: Somebody has to carry the pumpkins.

The City of the Big Orange Squash is looking for 300 volunteers to put their backs--and hearts--into Calabasas Days/Pumpkin Festival. The festival is Oct. 23 and 24 at the Paramount Ranch, a site in the Santa Monica Mountains National Park.

Volunteers can lift pumpkins, work as stagehands, even measure distance and accuracy in a highly competitive pumpkin seed spitting contest.

The festival is part of a weeklong celebration that kicks off Oct. 16 with the Pumpkin Patch Parade in Old Town Calabasas on Calabasas Road. Volunteers are also needed that day to help with the parade, a pumpkin cook-off, a pumpkin weigh-off, a pumpkin-decorating contest and an obstacle course race run with pumpkin-laden wheelbarrows.

The city of Calabasas, from the Spanish word for pumpkin, calabaza , and its Chamber of Commerce are sponsoring the events to raise money for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which operates a retirement home and a hospital in Woodland Hills, and more than 30 local nonprofit organizations, said Danone Simpson, executive producer of Calabasas Days.

Last year’s event drew nearly 20,000 people to the two-day festival and parade, said Calabasas Days chairman Alan Ungar. “I expect a lot more this year,” he added.

Local groups raised about $30,000, Ungar said.

This year, money from ticket sales will be divided among the groups. Volunteers can specify which organization they want to assist, said Diane Eaton, executive director of the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce.

Last year taught Eaton that the festival’s success depends on the legions of volunteers it takes to organize, advertise, set up and clean up the festivities.

“We just couldn’t do it without them,” said Eaton. “It’s become a real community event.”

Actor Beau Bridges helped out with last year’s seed spitting contest.

This year, a “Celebrity Haunted Saloon” will feature actress Jennifer O’Neil, members of the Los Angeles Lakers, “Hawk” from American Gladiators, and June Foray, the voice of cartoon characters Papa Smurf and Rocky and Bullwinkle, Simpson said.

The Western saloon is in keeping with the festival’s theme of “The Old West with a New Spirit--A Time for Family Fun.”

“The ‘new spirit’ is very important because we’re honoring a part of the West that was there but not honored very much,” Ungar said. “There’s no machismo, no guns, no violence.”

There will, however, be “Pumpkin Beer,” Ungar said. And what is pumpkin beer?

“I’m not telling. You’ll just have to come taste it.”

Call (818) 591-2177 to volunteer.

Other volunteer opportunities:

Habitat of Humanity of San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys needs volunteers to hammer nails, punch computer keys, answer phones, etc. The chapter, formed in 1990, is building eight townhomes in Pacoima. The low-income families who will receive the homes must contribute 500 hours of “sweat equity” into the construction, but additional help is needed. Volunteers don’t need construction experience. Habitat also needs office volunteers, committee members and fund-raisers. Call (818) 980-9797.

The Sylmar Chamber of Commerce needs a volunteer to work in its office weekdays from 9 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. The volunteer will be asked to answer phones, help with word processing and other clerical work. Call Doris Jacobs at (818) 367-1177.

Temple Judea in Tarzana is accepting applications for volunteer tutors to teach English to adult speakers of other languages. The temple asks volunteers to work two to four hours weekly and make a one-year commitment. Volunteers are asked to complete 16 hours of training, beginning Oct. 30. Those interested should call the Temple Judea office at (818) 987-2616.

Getting Involved is a weekly listing of volunteering opportunities. Please address prospective listings to Getting Involved, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Or fax them to (818-772-3338).