Many Are Giving Any Way They Can

Schoolchildren, anglers, firefighters--so many people were moved to do something to help the victims of last week’s terrorist attacks.

“When the twin towers went down, you felt like you couldn’t do anything,” said 12-year-old Devin Morris of Sherman Oaks. “I couldn’t give blood, because I’m a kid.”

Instead, Devin and a dozen middle school classmates at Foundations School Community in Van Nuys held a bake sale.

Their nondenominational private school is across Sherman Way from a Red Cross blood center. Donors would relish a chocolate cupcake with sprinkles, the children reasoned. So they set up tables at the center laden with lemon squares, blueberry muffins and other homemade treats, plus some Krispy Kreme doughnuts brought by 12-year-old Jon E. Brown. Passersby could take their pick for a minimum donation of $2.

By noon, Devin’s brownies had sold out, and the children had raised more than $500 for the Red Cross. “Now I feel like I’ve done something,” said Devin, a big grin on his freckled face.

It’s a feeling that many Southern Californians have experienced in recent days--a need to ease the suffering so many miles away. Lacking the power of a big company or nonprofit organization, they act on a smaller scale--with carwashes and jugs filled with dollars.

USC social psychologist Jerald Jellison is not surprised that people are seeking ways to help, given how helpless many feel in light of the attacks.

“You want a device to give you a sense of control, and participating in an activity like giving blood or money or other tangible goods gives you that sense,” Jellison said. “Another motive is a genuine desire to help.”

Among such efforts: Southern California anglers sent more than 1,000 pounds of fish to New York to feed rescue volunteers.

“Everybody I knew had a freezer full of fish from the end of our fishing season. I thought, ‘What better use for it?’ ” said Chuck Robinson, 47, a retired Anaheim firefighter.

Robinson formed Fish for America after hearing on the radio that a Hard Rock Cafe in New York needed food for the volunteers. He posted an Internet appeal, and the shipment of frozen fish left Monday for New York, courtesy of a Federal Express center in Irvine.

Southern California firefighters, shaken by the deaths of their New York counterparts, longed to take action, in addition to raising money.

A fourth-generation firefighter in Monterey Park, Shannon Files, rued his inability to join in the rescue in New York. He had been taught by one of the missing firefighters. “Ironically, he was an instructor on structural-collapse rescue,” Files said.

“It’s hard to help from so far away,” said Bill Bailey, president of the Glendale Firefighters Union. “A lot of the guys are frustrated by that fact.”

The firefighters from Monterey Park and Glendale joined those from a dozen other Southern California cities Monday at Burbank Fire Station No. 12 to honor their fallen colleagues.

“We are a very tight-knit group of professionals, and their pain is our pain,” said Dan Terry, president of California Professional Firefighters. The attacks in New York left “700 children whose fathers will never come home,” he said.

The Arcadia Firefighters Assn. planned to donate more than $20,000 in vacation pay to the survivors of lost firefighters.

Orange County firefighters put an American flag on every firetruck, according to Joe Kerr of the county’s Professional Firefighters Assn.

“We lost more firefighters in a two-hour period than we generally lose in a three-year period in all of North America,” Kerr said.

Despite the loss, he said, “the resolve of the firefighters here and across the nation hasn’t changed. They’re still going to rush in when everyone else rushes out.”

Jeff Zimmerman, president of the San Luis Obispo Firefighters Union, presented Terry with a mock check for $30,000 that he and his colleagues had raised. One elderly woman gave money that she had planned to spend on a hearing aid.

Last week, volunteer firefighters in tiny Fillmore in Ventura County stood downtown holding out boots as donation jars and raised $1,000 an hour, for a total of $24,000. “People came by five and six times giving money, kids emptied out piggy banks, cars did U-turns and emptied out ashtrays full of change,” said Fire Chief Pat Askren. “This is part of the healing process.”

In Anaheim, cars filled with people who wanted to contribute began lining up outside Edison International Field at 7 a.m. Sunday. The drive-through fund-raiser at the baseball stadium collected $780,710 for the Red Cross.

“A lot of us on the West Coast feel incomplete because we feel so far removed,” said Tim Mead, a spokesman for the Anaheim Angels, a co-sponsor. “People were looking for a place to go.”

Seventeen-year-old Jennifer Geisbauer and friends at La Canada High School held a carwash over the weekend that raised $2,800.

“People who didn’t even get their car washed donated $100,” she said.

More than 35 teenage employees at Mountasia Family Fun Center in Santa Clarita asked whether they could forgo their annual bonus trip to Medieval Times in Buena Park and contribute the money--$2,000--to the Red Cross.

“Everybody says these kids are so narcissistic,” said assistant general manager Steve Earley. “But let me tell you, they rose to the occasion and did something that moved all of us.”

Parishioners at St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Huntington Beach raised more than $40,000 over the weekend. Pastor Bruce Patterson didn’t wait for approval from the diocese, saying he thought it would be “easier to get forgiveness than permission” for the drive.

Malibu business consultant Frank J. Safechuck, 51, began collecting for New York firefighters last Wednesday along Pacific Coast Highway.

Passersby, some in tears, dropped donations into an empty water jug he had carried out from his garage.

“At first I felt a sense of helplessness, but now it’s amazing to see people respond like this,” Safechuck said.

But by Friday morning, the local sheriff’s station was getting calls asking whether the man raising money on PCH was legitimate. So Safechuck reluctantly decided to stop his roadside solicitation and turned over the $3,600 he had collected to a firefighters fund in Santa Barbara.

“I hope we don’t let fear get the best of us,” he said.

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Times staff writers Joe Mathews, Ann Conway, Tina Borgatta, David McKibben and David Kelly contributed to this story.