Angels help students’ U.S. tour

The school bus driver was trying to figure out how to come up with more than $10,000 for a cross-country trip with 20 kids leaving the next night when the e-mail and tearful phone calls started pouring in.

Hundreds of people wanted to help and some showed up on her doorstep offering bags of granola bars and apples, gasoline and money -- including a check for $10,000.

“They were coming. I was crying. Everybody was crying,” said Tanya Walters, 37, a Los Angeles Unified School District bus driver who answered her door Sunday in her pajamas.

Walters founded the GodParents Youth Organization, a nonprofit traveling mentor program for students. “People came and said, ‘Don’t put anything on your credit card -- here.’ ”

On Sunday, The Times ran a story about Walters and her weeklong trip with a busload of teenagers who rarely had the chance to travel. They would depart after Christmas with an itinerary that included colleges in Arizona, Texas and Louisiana, and a stop in New Orleans, where they would distribute backpacks of clothes and toiletries to children affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Walters had raised about $8,000 from other school bus drivers, churches and community members, but with no public relations background and no website, she had relied on word of mouth.

Two days before departure, she was still short. Walters had planned to charge the balance to her credit card, but on Christmas she realized she wouldn’t have to: In two days, she raised $24,680 and received $14,300 more in pledges.

Web designers offered to create a page for the organization. Television news crews filmed the group’s send-off. Reporters and sponsors planned to meet the bus along the way.

“I am just so humbled,” Walters said by telephone from the bus Tuesday as it made its way out of Tucson and into New Mexico.

A school bus driver for 20 years, Walters started the touring program three years ago to take children to colleges, museums and historical sites. She asked them to apply in essays.

Some students wrote about how they wished they could leave their neighborhoods where they had seen people beaten, chased and shot.

Others said they dreamed of traveling but did not have the money.

In August, Walters took nine youngsters across the country in a van. This time, she hired a charter bus for her biggest group yet.

Just after midnight Tuesday, the students said goodbye to their families. On the bus, they sang Beyonce songs, made up a rap about the trip, wrote in their journals and fell asleep listening to CD players.

Anthony Cole, 17, who attends Jordan High School in Long Beach, said in a telephone interview that he could not wait to hand out pajamas, toothbrushes and teddy bears to Hurricane Katrina victims. “I want to see the looks on kids’ faces,” he said, “to see how surprised and happy they will be, and to let them know somebody is out there thinking about them.”

Riding through the desert in the dark, he said, the route to Arizona looked different from the big city. “At night it was really beautiful,” he said. “You saw all the stars. It’s not something you see in L.A. because of all the pollution, I guess.”

After stopping for breakfast and a tour of Arizona State University, the students raced each other back to the bus.

Six mentors are also on the trip. Each day of the trip, Walters planned to give the students definitions of five words that they would practice and use in sentences.

Tuesday’s words were “apathy,” “integrity,” “optimistic,” “commend” and, Walters’ favorite, “faith.” That, she said, is what helped her pull it off.

“I thank God for the challenges,” she said. “I’m focused.”

Walters is already planning more trips, including one during spring break to Portland, Ore., and another over the summer to visit the original 13 U.S. colonies.

She wants to start a reading program, collaborating with other school bus drivers as mentors.

She also wants to coordinate a lunch program for students to try food from different cultures. Her trips might one day be able to take students to more far-flung places, she said, maybe even outside of the country.

“Next time,” she said, “just imagine.”

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erika.hayasaki@latimes.com