Santa’s Helpers : Teen-Age Girls in Shelter Give Back to Needy Families

Homemade cakes shaped like reindeer and snowmen lined the kitchen counter, waiting to be delivered to two disadvantaged families.

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With the roundness of her eight-month pregnancy showing, an energetic Staci, 18, and a dozen other teen-age girls loaded Christmas trees, food baskets and gifts into a van bound for the two families.

“Most of us here know what it’s like to not have much,” said Staci who, like the others at work, lives in a shelter for abused and troubled teens, Florence Crittenton Services.

Because of their own experiences, the group this year launched a new program, preparing a special Christmas for two needy families whom they found through a church.

Like others at Crittenton, Staci has spent most of her life shuffling to various group homes and foster programs. At age 8, by court order, she was removed from a family disrupted by drugs and negligence.

“Being through the system, I’ve learned the importance of sentimental values, not material value,” she said. “That’s why I want to help others.”

Every Christmas, major companies and individual families throughout the county have adopted residents of the Florence Crittenton House and catered holiday dinners or delivered gifts and clothes. But usually the youths never met the donors, leaving an emptiness.

This year, inspired by the good will, a group of Crittenton residents are returning the favor--with a personal touch.

For two weeks, they scrambled to raise money for gifts and decorations by holding carwashes, bake sales and yard sales. With careful hands, they crafted cardboard ornaments for trees. They crocheted gifts for the two single mothers.

On Tuesday, they packed baskets with turkeys, potatoes and fruit and loaded them into the van beside presents with ornate bows and curled ribbons.

That evening, the girls met their chosen families for the first time when they delivered the groceries and gifts.

The visits will not be their last, the girls hope.

“We want to individualize their Christmas. We’re going to find out what they need and try to buy them,” Staci said.

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The excited teens hope to continue this project throughout the year, perhaps by adopting a family every month or helping the same family over six months, said 17-year-old Sherene.

“I would like to see them get back on their feet. It’s mandatory that I give back to people. When I was in need, people gave to me,” she said.

Around this time five years ago, Sherene returned home from eighth grade to find her apartment reduced to ashes and her mother injured by jumping from a second-floor window. The fire had begun when a neighbor left clothes to dry on a gas furnace.

The new outfit Sherene had received for Christmas would be the only one she owned, until her junior high school principal organized a food and clothes drive for her family.

“It was a blessing,” the teen-ager said with a tear in her eye. “I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to have nothing.”

Sherene was placed at Crittenton a year and a half ago because she refused to go to high school and “thought I could do anything I wanted,” she said. She is now applying to colleges and plans to study criminal justice.

Like Sherene, most of the 84 girls at Crittenton are between 15 and 18. A third of them are pregnant or parenting; 33 babies also live at the home.

Seventy percent of the girls have a history of severe physical or sexual abuse, officials said. They enter Crittenton bitter and distrustful, executive director Mary Ann Xavier said.

“Some of these girls are not very giving. They have been abused and been hurt as children. Most of the adults in their lives took away their trust,” Xavier said. “It amazes me how they have the strength to pop up in the morning and go on. Now they are trusting again by giving out to people.”