Firefighters, Officers Aid Needy : Donations: Family whose home was destroyed in a fire receives items from a station toy drive. And police collect funds for children of a slain safety officer.

While last-minute shoppers hurried to buy the final gifts on their Christmas lists Saturday, firefighters and police throughout the area scrambled to take care of children who might have gone without because of family tragedies.

At a Los Angeles County Fire Department station in Val Verde, firefighters spent the day trying to track down a family whose $38,000 home burned to the ground in early December. The station had more than 20 items left over from its toy drive and the firefighters decided the bundle couldn’t go to a needier place.

The Hilario family, the firefighters remembered, had six children and had lost all of their possessions in the blaze that began because an iron had not been unplugged. The family listed its total property losses at $8,000.

With only the family’s previous address to go on, Engineer Randy Osborne called sheriff’s deputies in Santa Clarita, the Red Cross and anyone else he could think of to locate the family’s new address. He had heard that the family had been staying in a local motel, but had moved out.

As a last resort, Osborne called directory assistance, which supplied him with the family’s phone number in Saugus.

Osborne laughed at his attempts to play detective, but not at the good will that inspired the hunt.

“They were just overwhelmed when we brought the stuff,” he said. “They had some stuff, but they have three teen-agers and they didn’t have much for them.”

In a similar good-will effort, officers at the West Valley Division of the Los Angeles Police Department chipped in for two young children whose father was fatally shot Wednesday night while trying to stop a robbery.

The station collected $450 for the children of Thomas Worley, a Los Angeles County Safety Police officer. With other donations from area merchants and elected officials, the officers hope to collect about $1,000 for Worley’s 6-year-old daughter, Christina, and 2-year-old son, Matthew.

“It happened in our division and we were at the scene and personally we all saw that the officer didn’t have a lot of money,” Lt. Anthony Alba said. “We felt the need in our hearts.”