No-Scrooge Zone

The largest Christmas party in town had something in common with the smallest on Sunday as people around Los Angeles stopped what they were doing to help feed the poor and give toys to needy children.

Hundreds of volunteers descended on downtown’s skid row to distribute toys, groceries and Christmas trees to about 7,000 people who lined up for blocks outside the Fred Jordan Mission.

A few friends in the Crenshaw district helped Daisy Jefferson present toys and gift baskets of food to eight families invited to a borrowed storefront theater.

It seemed like everywhere one turned, people were spending part of their day spreading holiday cheer--or in one case, dollar bills--on the Sunday before Christmas.

“I’d normally be out playing golf, no question about it,” said off-duty Alhambra Police Officer Ron Andreas as he sorted through toys and groceries that officers delivered to the San Gabriel Valley city’s neediest families.

“No, I haven’t even started my holiday shopping yet,” said Van Nuys coin and jewelry dealer Ken Gerston as he stood on 13 tons of crushed ice “snow” and helped hand out toys to children from 30 homeless families at a North Hollywood shelter.

For many, wrapping gifts and preparing food baskets for people they have never met has become almost as much of a holiday tradition as decorating the Christmas tree or lighting the Hanukkah menorah.

Lynda Modaff, a Westchester graphic artist, traveled to West Hollywood just as she has each of the past seven Christmas seasons to fill gift bags with groceries for needy immigrants, destitute senior citizens and AIDS sufferers.

“About a dozen of us filled about 50 bags that first year,” Modaff said.

Forty volunteers working Sunday in the Plummer Park clubhouse loaded 500 grocery bags. Private donations, along with a sizable cash gift from Warner Bros. studio, sent members of a group that calls itself “Good Neighbors” on a three-day grocery shopping spree to fill the bags with food and such things as shampoo and toothpaste, said Ruth Williams, a West Hollywood personnel consultant.

The bags will be distributed today by deputies from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s station in West Hollywood, said Deputy Bruce Thomas.

“A lot of families try on the outside to show that everything is OK, but for a lot of them it isn’t,” said Thomas, a Reseda resident.

Bag-filler Steve Martin, a lawyer from West Hollywood, agreed. “The Westside has a lot of invisible people in need,” he said.

In North Hollywood, jeweler Gerston was marking his ninth year as a sponsor of the Valley Shelter’s annual Christmas party. And Gerston--clad in a Santa Claus hat--is Jewish.

“Why do I do it? Look around. These are homeless kids that wouldn’t be having any presents,” said Gerston, who lives in Sherman Oaks.

Gerston solicited donations of toys in newspaper ads and gave a free Norman Rockwell commemorative coin to everyone who donated a toy. He said he went through more than 1,000 of the Rockwells.

A grocery company, a retail chain and several entertainment firms also contributed to the shelter party and to entertainment for the homeless families.

Donations from all over fueled Fred Jordan Mission’s annual holiday event, which the mission dubbed “the World’s Biggest Christmas Party.” Choirs and costumed cartoon characters entertained skid row youngsters in downtown Los Angeles as volunteers distributed food and toys.

Accountant Stuart Harkness of Los Angeles--who sliced tomatoes for more than 1,000 sandwiches--was among 20 workers from his firm who showed up to work.

Angela Valenzuela, a district attorney’s office staff assistant from West Covina, came with 22 “at-risk” students who have been paired up with Los Angeles County firefighters in a mentoring program.

Fire Department engineer Rudy Mariscal, who lives in Lancaster, said the day’s work marked his 10th year helping on skid row at Christmas. He said youngsters in the mentor program learn an important lesson of responsibility when they see how grateful people are for holiday assistance.

In Alhambra, a caravan of police officers played Christmas carols over a loudspeaker as they delivered toys and gifts. Twelve families--most selected by Officer Pete Nava, the department’s DARE officer--were singled out for help.

Many of the toys were donated by Ron Johnson, the parts manager of a local Chevrolet dealership that services Alhambra police cars. Johnson hit up friends and family members for cash donations and then wrangled a discount from a Toys R Us outlet near his Lancaster home.

Johnson learned of the police program, run annually by the Alhambra Police Officers Assn., when Officer Joe Flannagan brought in a patrol car for repairs. “Alhambra is very diverse. But it’s not unique: Every city has people who are in need,” said Flannagan, a Covina resident.

Other events helping the needy Sunday included a festival staged at Our Lady of Peace Church in North Hills that benefited about 2,000 children and the distribution by Viking Charities of about 1,200 Christmas boxes by volunteers and sheriff’s deputies from Beverly Hills.

In downtown Los Angeles, Father Maurice Chase, a Catholic priest known to the poor as “Father Dollar Bill,” staged his annual $1 giveaway to about 5,000 homeless people outside the Salvation Army Mission.

Things were more down-home in the Leimert Park area, where Daisy Jefferson hosted eight families of foster children at a lunch of donated pizza, gift baskets of food, toys and a visit from a volunteer Santa portrayed by Vincent Andrews.

Jefferson said she decided to help the less fortunate after overcoming homelessness herself.

“I lived with my kids in the car. They’d wash up in the park and then go to school,” she said of a period 10 years ago. “It was horrible. We needed a little help, and at first I didn’t know where to turn.”

But others helped her, Jefferson said. “And now I want to give back.”