Shoe Shortage Takes Shine Off Giveaway : Charity: Drop in gifts disappoints thousands of needy L.A. children.

The day started out with a white lie.

“Welcome to the happiest place on earth! Can you believe we’re in the middle of Skid Row?” Willie Jordan beamed earnestly into the television camera.

It was Back-to-School Day at the homeless shelter that Jordan operates in Downtown Los Angeles. Stretching behind her in a line snaking down the street and around the corner were about 7,000 children waiting to receive free school supplies, clothing and shoes.

Problem was, there were only 5,000 pairs of shoes.

“Let us in! Let us in!” children shouted, starting to pound on a security gate outside the Fred Jordan Mission, where some of them had waited all night.

Beyond the gate, 20 employees of the Foot Locker chain were hurriedly sorting through boxes of sneakers stacked according to size.

“It’s going to be tough turning people away,” admitted company executive Andy Rosenkilde, who for the past six years has had plenty of shoes for needy children at the mission’s annual Back-to-School Day giveaway.

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“In the past, the manufacturers helped by donating,” Rosenkilde said. “But the economic climate is a little difficult this year--people have had to re-evaluate what they’re doing.”

Indeed, there were no shoes to fit one of the first children through the gate: the 4-year-old grandson of Natividad Lopez of East Los Angeles.

Lopez had waited on the sidewalk outside the mission for more than 23 hours with a group of grandchildren, nieces and nephews. They had huddled in blankets and sleeping bags, she said, unable to doze off until about 4 a.m. because gunshots had rung out on a nearby Towne Avenue corner.

“We’re here because we need the shoes,” she said, pleading for a pair to fit the boy in her arms.

Jordan listened as a volunteer apologized that there were no shoes in his size. The smile that she had flashed moments earlier for the video to be shown on a mission TV show was gone now.

“Oh, this is going to be a miserable day,” Jordan moaned.

In the past, Back-to-School Day has been a happy one for the volunteers who work at the mission, which was opened in a six-floor hotel building in 1944 by Baptist minister Fred Jordan. He died in 1988, but family members, including his widow, have continued his work.

It was Willie Jordan who proposed outfitting schoolchildren after her husband died. The first year, enough clothing was obtained for about 100 children living in nearby Skid Row hotels.

Soon, however, clothing manufacturers were donating boxes of new, brand-name pants and shirts and an ample supply of free notebooks and other school supplies.

Gifts from Nike, L.A. Gear and other manufacturers gathered by Foot Locker were always the centerpiece: Some of the brand-new shoes sold for as much as $160 in stores.

There was so much to give away, in fact, that for six years Back-to-School Day was actually a two-day affair. Last year, about 8,000 children were helped.

Not this time.

“It’s only one day this year. Donations are really low,” mission spokeswoman Tina Soikkili said as small groups of excited children were admitted through the gate.

Willie Jordan said: “As the economy drops, the poor multiply. You have fewer donations and more people. We’re in the middle. We’re panicking how we can meet their needs.”

Workers say this is the first year that corporate giving has slipped. Several clothing companies that were involved last year have either gone out of business or been sold. Others are re-examining their gift-giving policies.

Virtually every Los Angeles-area charity and nonprofit organization is in the same bind, leaders said Tuesday.

“Small organizations like ours are scrambling,” acknowledged Carol Darnell, head of Starting Over Sober Inc., a 17-bed housing and support organization based in South-Central Los Angeles. “Donations are 20% off this year. But our clientele certainly isn’t.”

Jill Dominguez, vice president of Operation Hope, a Los Angeles group that assists nonprofit organizations, said the funding crisis was a major topic of discussion at a national conference of nonprofit groups held in May by the Council on Foundations.

“Money is tight. Corporate giving is not high and even individual donors are sometimes finding themselves laid off,” Dominguez said.

That explanation was of little consolation to Yvette Jones, a Culver City mother of four who hitched a ride with her father to the mission to get school clothes for her children. Two of them emerged without new shoes.

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“They said they don’t have any their size. As you can see, they need them,” Jones said as Lawrence, 7, and Diontia, 5, stood forlornly outside the mission doors, where free In-N-Out Burger lunches were being distributed. Instead of shoes, the two boys had been given socks.

A surprise donation of 400 shoes arrived at 3 p.m. from Reebok. But by then mission workers had walked down the line and told waiting children that there would probably not be enough shoes to go around. Many families left.

Rosenkilde said Foot Locker wants to return for next year’s Back-to-School Day. “The business climate changes weekly, monthly. We certainly hope to be back,” he said.

Willie Jordan was suddenly feeling better too.

“If you look around, you can get so discouraged you want to crawl in a hole and die,” she said. “But you have to try to give a pocket of hope to those around you.”