O.C. Good Samaritans Offer a Hand or Home, but Few Will Take It : Volunteers: Lack of response to free ads seen as a sign that Laguna fire victims are well on the way to recovery.

Orange County residents, some with personal ties to areas devastated by the fire, have offered a wide variety of goods and services to victims through Los Angeles Times free classified ads. While there haven’t been many takers so far, the good Samaritans say they take that as a hopeful sign for the recovery.

“Why not?” said Elena Layland, explaining why she offered lodging in her Mission Viejo home, now that her children are grown and out of the house.

“When someone has a terrible tragedy, my heart goes out to them,” Layland said. “My husband and I have been involved as volunteers in the community. I have a lot of friends in Laguna Beach, friends who lost their homes. They’re getting themselves situated, but there might be someone who doesn’t have a friend or family nearby.”

Tom Pontac of Huntington Beach also offered a room in his home.

“I run in Crystal Cove,” he said, adding that viewing the fire damage there “was extraordinarily sad.”

While his own life is not problem-free, he said, “my family has a history of service, and I try to follow that. I just felt it was the right thing to do” to open his house.

“We’re all in this together,” Pontac said. “I don’t want to say that because I can’t help the world, I can’t help one person.”

Others who placed ads were brushed by the fire, and wanted to show their gratitude for being spared.

Diane Rosentreter, a Corona del Mar teacher, spent Wednesday night hosing down the roof of the house she shares with a roommate and making duplicate computer disks of her lesson plans in case she had to evacuate.

When the danger subsided, Rosentreter and her roommate, who is also a teacher, decided to offer the master bedroom, which they usually rent out, to a fire victim.

“Just realizing how terrible it would be to have all your accouterments of living taken from you,” Rosentreter said, compelled them to help others.

Not far away, on the UC Irvine campus, members of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity also saw the fire approaching. The fraternity’s president, Eric I. Fineberg, worried about El Morro Elementary School in Laguna Beach, where he works with hyperactive students. So the fraternity offered a variety of services, including child care, cleanup, counseling, transportation and two empty rooms in the fraternity house.

“I wanted to help the kids,” Fineberg said. “I know a lot of them. We wanted to help those kids out and the families, if we could.”

Biology graduate student Kate Guttridge and her husband were so concerned about smoke on the campus and the fire’s progress Wednesday night that they spent the night with friends in Orange. When they returned, they wrote an ad offering help with weekend cleanups.

“I felt like if anyone needed some help, we would help them,” Guttridge said.

Scott Hostetler and his wife, Pam, of Newport Beach volunteered help in any way they could because “we have friends and neighbors in Laguna Beach,” he said, “and we just wanted help, anything we could do, any little thing. Who knows? Maybe someday we might need help.”

Jean Beek, also of Newport Beach, offered lodging “because we have two bedrooms and food, and people would need a place to sleep and eat. . . . We knew we couldn’t go down there and add to the problems.” She voiced concern for her friends and fellow members of a Laguna folk dance group.

“People who are in a moment of despair need some help,” said David G. Killion of San Clemente, “and I’d like to have the opportunity to provide that.”

Many of those offering aid had no personal connections to the fire-devastated areas, or to South Orange County.

“My wife has time and a desire to help in a time of need,” said Joe Saunders of Orange. His wife also volunteered to help at the Red Cross, answering phones, he said.

Cathy Cargill offered a room in her Garden Grove home because “I just retired and I’m not doing anything. I must be able to do something.”

Jim Baccanti, also of Garden Grove, said his ad offering general assistance has so far prompted only a single call.

“One guy needed carpentry tools,” Baccanti said, “and we didn’t have anything of that nature. . . . We’re trying to see if we can get anything together for him.”

Erin Trunel of Newport Beach said the fact that he had no responses so far to his ad offering help was hopeful.

“It seems to me people have their own resources,” he said. “That was the most reassuring part of it.”

Pat Freeman of Fullerton said her ad drew no calls, and she agreed that that sent a positive message about the fire victims.

“I think it’s a very independent group,” she said, “people who have resources. People who are affluent enough and savvy enough to pick themselves up and get on with their lives.”