A Special Day of Little Miracles for the Luckless

Little Christmas miracles were happening just about every minute at the Union Rescue Mission on Monday.

Joyce Perryman talked to her mother on the telephone.

Albert and Alice Fong watched as children swept up, clutched and cuddled the stuffed toys that they had brought in 10 giant plastic bags.

And Paul H. had a roof over his head and a Christmas meal of baked ham and yams and, just maybe, a future.

That’s ordinary stuff to most Southern Californians, but they were special events for the poor, homeless and otherwise less fortunate people of downtown Los Angeles who flocked to the mission on South San Pedro Street on Christmas Day.

There will, of course, always be a few such as the sniveling Grinch who snitched a Salvation Army kettle at a discount store in Hemet on Christmas Eve. While the Salvation Army volunteer was on a bathroom break, a hand reached under the restroom stall and grabbed the kettle holding about $150 in coins, Associated Press reported.

The mission was not the only charitable organization helping down-and-outers on Christmas. But it is the largest and most venerable, dating from 1891 when it was established by Union Oil Co. founder Lyman Stewart.

More than 400 Jewish volunteers participated in the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles’ community volunteer day, distributing food and presents to the homeless and needy and visiting AIDS patients.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony celebrated Christmas Mass with inmates at the downtown Men’s Central Jail and then at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral.

Also Monday, weather experts were explaining why a new major storm that had been forecast for the region on Christmas failed to develop. They said the rain actually fell, but at high altitudes; the moisture evaporated before reaching the ground, they said.

In North Hollywood, Uzzi Raanan and about 15 other Jewish volunteers gathered to add a fresh coat of paint to a home that serves as a neutral place for foster children to visit their biological parents.

“Obviously, I don’t celebrate Christmas,” said Raanan, an American Jew who grew up in Israel. “This is a great opportunity to do something on a day when you don’t usually get to do very much.”

“Though [Christmas] doesn’t have any religious significance for us, we can still invest in our community,” said Irene Weibel, one of the organizers of the Jewish community volunteer day that began at the federation’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters with an address by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City).

Inside the home for foster children, run by the Children’s Bureau of Southern California, the whisper of paintbrushes quickly synchronized with the pounding beat of rock music from a boombox, and a day that can sometimes be rather isolating for non-Christians turned into one of pure teamwork.

“I think it’s a gift--that’s what it is for me,” said Beth Comsky, Raanan’s girlfriend.

A few volunteers weren’t Jewish at all but self-described refugees from seasonal madness.

“This is the best way I know of to celebrate Christmas,” said Terry Koken, who came with his Jewish girlfriend, as he sanded down the mantel of the living-room fireplace. “It beats the hell out of kids screaming at each other, wrapping paper on the floor, football on TV and drunk relatives.”

Back downtown at the Union Rescue Mission, tears of joy streamed down her cheeks as Joyce Perryman and sons Monteil, 11, and Chris, 9, exchanged holiday greetings with her 67-year-old mother in Phoenix.

Perryman, in a wheelchair and holding her 1-year-old son Guy, said she happened in off the street and discovered that the mission and Express Tel, a long-distance telephone provider, were offering free calls to anywhere in the United States.

Perryman had not talked to her mother in two years, she said.

“We just came in. It was really a blessing,” she said.

The Fongs just came in too, unannounced and without anyone needing to ask. They brought about 150 stuffed animals to distribute to needy children, said Warren D. Currie, president of the mission.

The Fongs sat on a courtyard bench and watched as mission volunteers attempted to organize the squirming youngsters into some sort of line to distribute the toys.

Fong, a retired market owner from Hawthorne, said the couple noticed the children in a newspaper photograph taken at the mission a year ago and decided to do something to help them. Eight months ago, the Fongs began collecting the toys from coin-operated games with remote-controlled tongs.

“We thought that maybe it would make some of them happy for just a few hours out of the year,” Fong said. “These kids have nothing. I just wish I could have brought more.”

The mission also distributed about 2,500 toys during the past week through a Christmas store operation that allowed parents to choose the gifts, wrap them and then take them home to present to their children. In that fashion, the gifts appeared to come from the parents rather than the institution, mission official Liz Mooradian said.

Back inside, Paul H. finished a free call to his parents in Indio and prepared to line up for the sit-down dinner, which was served in shifts over a several-hour period to about 4,500 diners.

Paul said he was released from prison at San Luis Obispo this fall after serving a four-year term for possession of drugs and passing bad checks. With the $400 he got upon leaving prison, he wound up back on on drugs and back on the street, he said.

About a month and a half ago, a street companion talked him into going to the mission for shelter from the elements. He became a full-time resident in the mission’s rehabilitation program.

On Monday, he was bright-eyed, fresh-faced and beaming.

“I’m just grateful this place is here,” he said. “Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have anywhere to go.”

Not everyone enjoyed little miracles on Monday, of course. A number of men sat mutely on metal folding chairs in the auditorium and stared as if in a daze. Outside the building, other homeless people who appeared to be even more destitute or disturbed wandered the streets and sidewalks.