Kindness in Store for Foster Children

Dressed down in a T-shirt and jeans with a mop of red hair, Joan Gendreau doesn’t look much like Santa Claus.

But to more than 800 foster children throughout Ventura County, that is who she is.

For more than 20 Christmases, Gendreau has spearheaded an effort to provide shiny bikes, dolls and teddy bears to county children spending the holidays in foster homes.

“We pay our foster parents just enough to cover food and very little else,” said Gendreau, president of the nonprofit Children’s Services Auxiliary. “There’s nothing left for special needs, for the special times.”

“It’s just a little thing,” adds county foster care employee Josephine Lopez. “But it helps fill that hole, even if for a little while, because they get to be just like all the other kids at Christmas.”

Gendreau, a retired social worker, started the program out of her garage 23 years ago, at first just buying a little food and some toys for a few foster parents so financially strapped that extras, like a Christmas turkey and gifts, were out of the question.

Today, her self-described toy store has grown to serve nearly every foster child with a need in the county. The auxiliary operates solely on private donations, the biggest coming from a fund-raising drive through local radio station KVTA-AM (1520). Their efforts this year brought in $34,000, Gendreau said.

It’s then up to Gendreau and her makeshift crew of elves--foster moms and social workers--to take the cash and go on a massive shopping spree, buying everything from baby dolls to winter coats. The team then sets up shop in donated office space--this year it was in a former furniture store in Ventura.

But the families say the place is irrelevant. It’s what is inside that counts--Christmas for hundreds of boys and girls.

“Financially, this is such a help,” said Valerie Cid, a Ventura foster mom to three brothers, ages 13, 12 and 10. “Because what the county gives you for raising a foster child is so little. And the kids want so much.”

Most foster checks average about $430 a month, though some checks are bigger if a child has disabilities or other special needs. The funds are meant to cover expenses for clothing, food, school supplies and extras such as band equipment or cheerleading uniforms.

Cid wandered through the maze of unwrapped toys, pausing when she spotted a bright red wagon. “My 10-year-old said he always wanted a wagon. And look,” she said, pulling at the long black handle. “Today I was blessed. They had just what he wanted.”

Before she left, Cid filled the little wagon with a log cabin building set and building blocks, all destined for a spot beneath her Christmas tree.

Darlene Ross-Martin of Oxnard said the 6-year-old foster daughter she has had for two years wanted a bike for Christmas. It was the first time she has asked for anything. Ross-Martin was determined to get that bike despite a limited budget. “I thought I’d have to borrow from my mom to get it,” she said.

But this week, she struggled to pull a box containing a hot pink and purple bicycle out of the toy store’s frontdoor. “I just left my name and asked if they got a bike, could they call me,” Ross-Martin said. “And today, they called.”

But not everything that kids request can be picked up in a toy store, Gendreau has learned. Every year she gets requests that tear at her heart, and those are the ones that remind her just what kind of child she is serving.

Three years ago, one girl asked for a gravestone.

“Apparently her mother and father had overdosed a year before,” Gendreau said. “So, that’s what she wanted, a tombstone for their grave.” The alliance filled her request.

And this year, a teenage girl’s sole Christmas wish was a dozen roses-- delivered at her door, just like she has seen in the movies. Girls who got flowers like that, she told her foster mom, had to be special.

“And she wanted to see what it would feel like to be that special,” Gendreau said. “So I had a social worker go online and take care of it.”

The kids are referred to the auxiliary’s program through social workers, who issue vouchers to foster parents.

Parents who have temporarily lost custody of their children but are involved in programs to straighten out their lives and reunite their broken families are also welcomed, said Gendreau. Because no matter how wonderful the gift, nothing matters as much to a foster child as that gift from mom or dad, she said.

Not all the gifts, however, will come Christmas Day. The auxiliary uses money for needs throughout the year, providing dollars for cheerleading camps, birthday and graduation gifts, even money for tuition and books if a foster child opts to continue his or her education through community college.

But there is no doubt that Christmastime creates the biggest need. And so Gendreau spends six days a week throughout December at her toy store. And yes, she expects to be there on Christmas. “A lot of kids get picked up that day,” she said.

“It is a lot of work,” she says. “But to help your fellow man like this, it’s so rewarding.”

The Children’s Services Auxiliary is one of the nonprofit organizations serving disadvantaged children eligible for funding from The Times Holiday Campaign Fund.

The newspaper established the campaign last year to aid charities that serve needy youths and families in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The Holiday Campaign program is part of the Times Family Fund, which includes the newspaper’s long-running Summer Camp program.

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