It’s No Holiday for Keeper of the Kettles

Capt. Steve Svenson swung the blue Ford van into the parking lot at the South Bay Galleria and, with half a dozen of the Salvation Army’s familiar red kettles rattling on the seat and some extra silver bells stashed on the console, brought the vehicle to a halt in front of the Mervyn’s department store.

A neatly dressed young man in a tie and a long ponytail stepped from the sidewalk to accept a kettle and a time card and exchange pleasantries with the captain, who on this recent morning was running a little late. Svenson uttered a hasty “God bless!” Then he set off for the next stop on his mall- and supermarket-lined route, leaving the young man to hook the kettle to its stand and begin a day of bell-ringing to solicit donations.

For more than a century, the Salvation Army’s red kettles have been a staple of the holiday shopping season across the nation. Bell-ringers--some wearing the crisp navy blue uniforms that mark them as cadets or officers in the evangelical Christian organization--take up posts from Thanksgiving to Christmas, urging passersby to feed money to the buckets to help provide for the needy at the holidays and throughout the year.

What the shoppers don’t see are the logistics people, the ones who make sure the kettles get delivered, the choice spots are covered, the bell-ringers are properly trained and supervised. As commanding officer (along with his wife, Merry) of the Salvation Army’s Redondo Beach Corps, it falls to Svenson to do that and more. And, as he goes about his work in Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, he can tell you all about “standing the kettles,” from enduring the tedium to ferreting out the occasional bell-ringing thief.

The kettle program takes a lot of work at the Salvation Army’s busiest time of the year. Every morning kettle coordinator Bruce Jamison staffs the phones at corps headquarters, making sure the posts are covered and smoothing out last-minute glitches. Next door, in the “counting room,” two others prepare the previous day’s take for deposit.

Then the uniformed cadets arrive from the organization’s ministry school on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and scoop up some of the kettles lined up in the hallway. Svenson takes the rest on his delivery route.

This season, Svenson and his troops are maintaining 13 collection spots in the three beach cities--down from the 17 they started the year with--and he would have liked to have had more. Although some collection points are staffed by volunteers, most are worked by seasonal employees who earn the minimum wage for eight-hour shifts.

Finding enough people to cover all the bases has never been easy, and, Svenson said, this year, with an improving economy and more jobs available, it was “a real struggle” to fill the slots.

“It’s not an easy job,” Svenson said. “It is lonely and tedious. You have to be very people-oriented and have a lot of patience and endurance.”

Svenson and his staff screen bell-ringing applicants drawn by help-wanted ads in the local papers, then give them an orientation (for which they are paid) in the finer points and rules of collecting, including appropriate interactions with potential donors. Some sample rules: Don’t leave the kettle unattended; give it to a store manager or security guard when you go on your break. No smoking or drinking at the kettle.

Employees who cannot afford presentable clothing are given vouchers to pick out some items at a Salvation Army thrift store. And payday comes once a week if at all possible.

“Many of our bell-ringers are needy themselves, and we try to see that they get their money as soon and as often as we can,” Svenson said.

Ever since a Bay Area Salvation Army captain set out the organization’s first Christmas collection pot at the Oakland ferry landing in 1891, the money passersby deposit into the little red kettles has added up to far more than pocket change.

Nationwide, donations to the kettles totaled more than $65 million last year, according to the organization’s national headquarters in Alexandria, Va. The Southern California Division accounted for nearly $1.5 million of that. Although, after expenses, the red kettle contributions represent just a fraction of the national organization’s income during the last fiscal year, the holiday collection campaign remains one of its most visible and enduring programs.

In the beach cities, the kettles typically bring in $100 to $200 a day, and considerably more in such high-volume locations as the Target and the Bristol Farms stores in upscale Manhattan Beach and the Lucky supermarket in working-class north Redondo Beach.

That is why Svenson hates to see a post standing empty even for a day. On a recent morning, he backtracked several times on his kettle distribution route, hoping to hook up with an apparently AWOL bell-ringer.

“I don’t have the time to be doing this,” Svenson said, aware that, back at corps headquarters, several other programs--including Adopt-a-Family, Christmas toy and food distributions, canned food drives at local public schools, Meals on Wheels for senior citizens and planning for holiday meals and services--were in full swing. “But I’m looking because we really need people to stand the kettles. Every one is important to the work that we do.”

Although clearly a compassionate man, Svenson is not one to turn the other cheek when he catches a bell-ringer pilfering from the kettle.

“They’re gone. Immediately. We have to protect the integrity of the program,” said Svenson, who views even the smallest theft as “defrauding our donors, defrauding us and, most of all, defrauding the people who need our help.”

In his nearly 15 years as a Salvation Army officer, Svenson has honed his skills at spotting the occasional theft. He is keenly aware of how much each kettle location usually pulls in and carefully watches the ratios of coins to bills in each caldron during counts at the beginning and end of each day.

He also gets help from the public, from people who call headquarters if they suspect something is amiss--like the time a store security guard saw a bell-ringer take a kettle into a restroom stall and then called Svenson upon hearing coins rattling from the emptying bucket.

Most of Svenson’s worries, however, have to do with keeping the posts staffed, preferably with friendly, reliable workers who will attract donors while projecting a positive image.

Helen Pole, who recently returned to her longtime post outside Vons in Redondo Beach after recuperating from an accident, fills the bill nicely.

Dressed in a red Salvation Army jacket, she knows the store employees and most of the regular customers by name and greets each contribution to her kettle with a hearty “God bless you!” or a call to remember to “sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jesus” on Christmas Day.

Pole, 62, looks upon bell-ringing as a ministry, “a job that God wants done.” She talks with people about their problems and prays with them, if they are open to that, or prays for them if they are unreceptive or hostile to her message.

“I don’t force it,” she said, explaining her approach. “My job is to tell them about the Lord and let him take care of the rest.”