A Battered Wife Gets Assistance -- and a New Life

The battered-women’s hotline rang at the Ocean Park Community Center in Santa Monica. On the line was a hospital emergency room worker trying to help an immigrant woman whose face was bleeding after a brutal beating by her husband.

The crisis line staff arranged to accommodate the woman, who spoke limited English, and her son at the center’s shelter. After several weeks of counseling, the two found an apartment, where they now live safely away from the woman’s abuser.

“Her story is not atypical,” said Roxann Smith, a director at the center, which also provides education and counseling for victims of abuse.

A $15,000 grant from the Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign enabled the organization to help the battered mother and others like her.

“It’s critically important for our program to get funding from community organizations like the Los Angeles Times fund,” Smith said. This week, The Times launches its annual Holiday Campaign to raise money for Southern California charities that help disadvantaged children and families.

Charitable donations to community groups have declined with the stock market slide and last year’s Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But growing numbers of people who cannot afford health or social services still need help, leaders of some social service agencies say.

The Holiday Campaign, established in 2000, is mounted by the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation. The foundation will match the first $700,000 raised at 50 cents on the dollar.

“All administrative costs are absorbed by The Times,” said Publisher John Puerner, “so every dollar donated goes directly to organizations that help children and youth.”

Last year, the holiday appeal and matching funds raised $653,000, which was granted to 56 charities serving Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

A Holiday Campaign donation helped the Catholic Charities of San Bernardino and Riverside feed and house a homeless family of five in a motel for several weeks last month, said Beverly Earl, director of the organization, which provides needy families with food, diapers and medicine, and sometimes pays for their heat or air-conditioning. Catholic Charities eventually helped the family find a permanent residence, Earl said.

Times money donated to Project Sister Sexual Assault Crisis Services Center in Pomona last year went toward sexual abuse prevention education programs in schools, said Linda Shestock, executive director.

“Families are under a lot of economic stress,” she said. “We’re experiencing both a high degree of increased requests for services and a lower degree of donations.”

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How to Give:

Donations (checks or money orders) supporting the Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign should be sent to: L.A. Times Holiday Campaign, File No. 56986, Los Angeles, CA 90074-6986. Please do not sent cash. Credit card donations can be made on the Web site: www .latimes.com/holidaycampaign.

All donations are tax-deductible. Contributions of $25 or more will be acknowledged in The Times unless a donor requests otherwise. Acknowledgment cannot be guaranteed for donations received after Dec. 18. For more information about the Holiday Campaign, call (800) LATIMES, ext. 75771.