Despite Theft, Group Delivers Its Turkeys

Setting aside its own troubles to aid families in need, a local nonprofit group dedicated to helping high-risk teenagers fulfilled a promise to hand out hundreds of free Thanksgiving dinners Monday despite being burglarized the night before.

Communities in Schools, which provides counseling and employment programs for teenagers in gang-ridden neighborhoods, lost about $6,000 in computer equipment Sunday night when thieves broke into the group’s San Fernando office, officials said. There were no suspects in the theft, officials said.

Its losses notwithstanding, Communities in Schools went ahead with plans to distribute more than 250 holiday dinners to needy families in the Northeast Valley, Executive Director William “Blinky” Rodriguez said.

“They took computers, they took printers, they took fax machines and a lot of other stuff,” Rodriguez said.

In the first of what Rodriguez said he hoped would become an annual event, representatives from several Northeast Valley neighborhoods--some of them gang members--gathered at a Glendale Federal Savings & Loan in San Fernando on Monday to distribute 285 Thanksgiving meals.

The meals, which included turkeys, potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce, were purchased with $1,300 contributed by local businesses during the last two months.

Without the giveaway, many of the families would not be celebrating Thanksgiving at all, Rodriguez said.

“Everyone is very happy to be able to do this,” he said. “These guys who are coming out here to help, it just shows that they are not all bad. They are really stepping up to plate to help.”

Rodriguez, who helped broker a truce among Valley Latino gangs four years ago, said insurance will pay for new equipment, but the agency will be hard-pressed to replace data that was stored on the stolen computers.

“It’s a big loss, but you have to go on,” he said. “We’ve got a job to do.”