Volunteers / Helping hands : BUENA PARK : Her Work Doesn’t Take a Holiday

The winter holiday season may seem far away, but Adell Colombini has 4,000 kids to worry about and only the kindness of strangers to make things happen.

The director of the Buena Park Coordinating Council hopes the pace picks up a bit this season, her 34th year of volunteering to help the city’s poor and homeless.

“We buy a lot with money donations, but this year has been bad,” Colombini, 78, said.

Each of the 734 families served by the private agency will get a ham or a turkey for the holidays and each child will get a toy.

The need at holiday time was the sole mission of the agency when Colombini started there. A man was running it out of a two-car garage with a dirt floor and he helped 50 families with holiday food and presents, she said. Now, she greets on average three new homeless families a day.

For Colombini, who supervises 12 other volunteers in a small warehouse of donated tins and clothes, the work was an easy slide from volunteering at her daughter’s school. “When you’re in PTA, honey, you do everything,” she said.

She also had her mother’s example to follow.

As a farmer’s wife in Depression-era Pennsylvania, her mother had lots of landless farmers knocking at the door for food. “She never let anyone walk away hungry,” Colombini said. “It must be in the blood.”

After so many years, she has seen whole families growing up in poverty. She understands their pain but also does not let them get away with much. “Sometimes I’m cheerful and sometimes I’m not,” she said. “It depends on the person I’m dealing with.”

Concha de la Cruz, a volunteer at the warehouse, said that Colombini’s cheer only fades when she thinks somebody is being wronged.

“The only time she gets upset is when she sees a woman coming in and the man is sitting in the car,” De la Cruz said. “She goes out and tells him to come in and carry the stuff. . . . She is always very concerned about the kids.”

Colombini plans to keep watching out for her families until physical age catches up with her. “I’ve got a lot of vim and vigor left,” she said. “If I wasn’t doing this I would just be home watching the idiot box. . . . I’ve got a few years left.”

Volunteers needed:

What: Ronald McDonald House charity event

Where: Palace Park Amusement Center, Irvine

Mission: Volunteers are needed to help with McDonald’s annual “Making Wishes Come True.” The event begins at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 19.

Information: (714) 857-5532 or (714) 559-8336, Ext. 134.

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What: Docents

Where: Children’s Museum at La Habra

Mission: Volunteers are needed to serve as tour guides, introduce children to the museum’s interactive discovery center and tell about exhibits and program.

Information: (310) 905-9793

--COMPILED BY LESLEY WRIGHT