A Tale of Two Santas, and Lots of Helpers
It doesn’t look much like Santa’s workshop, and the folks gathered round the table opening mail don’t have the pointy ears and red caps we usually associate with elves.
But if you have any doubt that this crowded cubicle in the regional post office in Santa Clarita is one of Santa’s headquarters, just take a look at the toys piled on tables and letters his helpers are sorting through:
Dear Santa,
I would like this year:
1) Game Boy Advance AC Adapter. $19.99.
2) Lady Sia Game Boy Advance Game. $39.99. That’s it! Serious! It’ll be $59.98 if you go to: www. vstore.com/cgi-bin/pagegen/vstore games-store/page.html?mode= homes&file;/page/homeispl. Then you order it!
Thanks, Rebecca.
P.S. No spacing in Web site name.
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Dear Santa,
I was wondering if you have seen my cat, Patches? She has been missing for 2 months. If you see her, pleas give her back to me on Chistmas morning. From Lina.
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Dear Santa Clause,
My mom has always wanted a dictionary. My dad always wanted a new job and to make more money. I always wanted a new chair. Maybe you can get us these things this year. Thank you. Love, Jesse.
And this, from a Manhattan Beach mother of three:
Dear Santa,
Can I have two hours a day to work out?
They arrive by the boxload every December, letters addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole,” carrying the hopes, dreams and wishes of thousands of children, and more than a few desperate adults.
For the past 25 years, post offices around the country have made it their mission to answer kids’ letters to Santa. It’s the only mail they are authorized by law to open, and the anthrax scare--at least in Southern California--hasn’t slowed them down one bit.
More than 30,000 letters to Santa will pass through local post offices this year. Most will get a form letter--signed by Santa, but making no promises--in response. But thousands of children will get more--special deliveries of toys, clothes, food, even Christmas trees, donated by postal workers and dedicated volunteers.
“It’s not just shopping lists of toys we get,” explained Stacia Crane, who heads the project for the Van Nuys District office in Santa Clarita. “We have kids asking for beds, food, help for Mom or Dad who just lost their job, toys for the baby ‘who is too little to know we’re poor.’ We try to get the neediest kids taken care of, but there are always more needs than there are volunteers.”
Appeals come in from desperate parents, grandparents, neighbors and teachers. Some schools in poor neighborhoods have made letter-writing an annual holiday project, and teachers flag the letters of the neediest kids: The fifth-grader whose family lives in a car. The 8-year-old with a brain tumor, who is facing her last Christmas. The handicapped girl who asked for new Nikes, but needs “a 71/2 for my left foot, and a 91/2 on the right, due to my brace.”
But most letters are unsolicited appeals from individual kids, and they range from funny to frivolous to unbearably sad.
“This Christmas I would like a Hello Kitty backpack with wheels and a Barbie,” wrote one girl. “But most of all, I would like to pass fourth grade.”
Mina confessed to a few indiscretions before asking Santa for his e-mail address. “I’m sorry for going on the Internet and going to the bad sights. I won’t ever do it again,” she promised.
And some expressed needs that even the real Santa Claus would be hard-pressed to meet.
“If I was a good kid, bad kid or an OK kid, I just want one thing this year,” wrote 12-year-old Stephanie. “And it is for my daddy to get better or wake up from his coma, so we can go to Lake Arrowhead for Chrismas. Please try to do this for my family, and especially for my mommy.”
With one week to go before Christmas, the letters to Santa are piling up and the supply of volunteers is getting thin. Postal workers are trying to bridge the gap; many will have their teenage kids stationed at post office computers this week, composing answers to Santa letters. And boxes of letters have been handed off to civic groups, churches, businesses and schools.
“Last year, we went right down to the wire,” Crane recalled. “It was a few days before Christmas and we had lots of letters left and no volunteers. Then we got a phone call from [singer] Chaka Khan. Her production company said ‘If you deliver them, we’ll take care of them.’ We all just sat here and cried.”
But most of their help comes from people like the limo driver who stepped up to help a little boy whose only Christmas wish was “a limo ride for my mom, to take her to [kidney] dialysis, so she can feel special, like she deserves.” And the couple who paid a family’s utility bill, after reading a letter from a little girl who told Santa that her house was always cold.
And the man whose son wrote years ago, asking Santa for help, “because my dad can’t find a job and what we really need is something to eat and maybe some clothes.” A local business owner gave the man a job, and every Christmas since, that father and son have visited the post office and left with a handful of letters full of dreams they’ll fulfill.
It’s volunteers like that who can make the difference for kids like this little girl, who said in her letter to Santa this year:
“I want to get my mom the money to get her hair permed because she has been talking about getting her hair done for a long time. She works so hard to buy us stuff and she spends lots of time with us in cheerleading. So that’s why I would like to do something special for her.”
Let’s hope Santa has a helper who’s a hairdresser.
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You can volunteer to help with the Letters to Santa program by calling one of the area’s regional post offices:
Los Angeles (323) 586-2656
Westside (310) 674-0382
San Fernando Valley (818) 718-0148
Orange County (714) 662-6215
Ventura, Santa Clarita (661) 775-6681
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Sandy Banks’ column runs on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.
