Bears Meant for Rest Home Get Rerouted to New York

The question late Wednesday was whether Christmas would ever come to Canoga Care Center, a Canoga Park convalescent home where 150 elderly residents awaited holiday teddy bears mistakenly dispatched to Turkey by a freight company.

The bears, however, were halted in New York. But a phone call at 5 p.m. from the freight company confirmed that the bears had missed a flight back to Los Angeles that would arrive at 10:15 p.m.

The company said they might be put on a flight arriving at 1 a.m., in time to be distributed Christmas Day.

“We’ll sing carols but we just won’t have any gifts to hand out,” said Candice Vorhies, 50, a Woodland Hills volunteer worker who hoped to pass out the teddy bears she ordered with 10 of her friends.

Vorhies’ visit to the hospital was coordinated through Holiday Project, a national, nonprofit, volunteer organization. The project is based in Petaluma, just north of San Francisco.

Project volunteers visit hospitals, jails, retirement homes and other institutions during various holidays, including Christmas and Hanukkah. Since 1980, Vorhies said the organization’s volunteers have visited about 3.3 million people.

Most of the patients at Canoga Care are at least 70 years old and some are ill, Vorhies said.

Holiday Project routinely provides its volunteers teddy bears--usually a small brown type--to hand out.

A few week ago, Vorhies--who has organized visits to various convalescent hospitals in the San Fernando Valley over the years--organized a group of friends to visit Canoga Care, sing carols and pass out the teddy bears.

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She ordered the gifts this month from Holiday Project and persuaded Oregon International Air Freight to deliver the seven boxes of bears from the Bay Area to Los Angeles for free.

The bears arrived at one of the company’s warehouses in Los Angeles on Dec. 17, but no one from Oregon International called Vorhies to pick them up. She called on Monday to find out the bears’ whereabouts. But before she could pick them up Tuesday, an Oregon International worker called her, saying the boxes had been mistaken for seven other boxes and were headed for Turkey.

Even if the boxes arrived early this morning, Vorhies said, she probably could not juggle her Christmas activities, go to Los Angeles International Airport and make the 10 a.m. visit to the hospital.

Oregon International would not pay to have the toys delivered directly to Vorhies, she said.

“When we get there, I’ll hand out [music] sheets,” she said Wednesday evening. “Of course, I’d have gifts normally.”