Phone-a-Thon Raises $1,000 for Homeless

A phone-a-thon that spanned three nights at the Huntington Beach Mall this week netted only $1,000 for a group building a homeless shelter in Midway City.

“We were a little disappointed,” said Jeanne O’Brien Bender, director of Shelter for the Homeless. “But we had warm, wonderful evenings with the volunteers, and this was just one of many fund-raisers.”

The phone-a-thon, co-sponsored by L.A. Cellular Telephone Co., was launched in an effort to raise enough for a job-training center in the new shelter. The total budget for the project is nearly $60,000 and the group has raised about half of that, Bender said.

Construction has started for the new, single-room-occupancy shelter near the group’s headquarters in Midway City. The shelter should be open by October, Bender said.

Information: (714) 897-3221.