Kindness of strangers? It can happen in the city

It was the kind of thing that popular myth says happens in America’s hamlets, not its urban centers. The kind of thing that small-town friends do for friends when misfortune strikes, not something big-city strangers do for people they’ve never met.

But at an otherwise nondescript meeting Tuesday of the Garden Grove chapter of the AARP, the members turned all that on its ear. They filled several tables in a community room at City Hall with items long past their prime, the kind of stuff you’d either throw away or bury in the closet.

So, it certainly wasn’t with any pretension that the members laid out the stuff. A 3-D jigsaw puzzle, a Dixieland record album, candles, a stuffed animal, a strand of beads, a Stephen King novel, some cookbooks, a dusty old cassette.

They were all for sale. Some had tags on them for a dollar or so; an aging TV that appeared to be a 12-inch model was going for $15. Some members in the room also bought raffle tickets -- seven for $3. If they held winners, they were allowed to snag an item.

I hear your question: Uh, so you’re writing about a white elephant sale today?

Yes, with pleasure.

Here’s why: As the sale was going on, I was talking outside the room with Josh Matua, a 37-year-old construction worker and bar manager. As improbable as it seemed to him, he was the reason for the sale.

Matua, his girlfriend and their infant son were living in a home on Mac Street in Garden Grove when a glowing bit of fireworks landed on the roof July 4 and set it on fire. The woman and boy weren’t home at the time, but Matua and longtime friend Mike Gentile, who owns the home, were. They escaped, but Matua says the fire did extensive damage to his family’s possessions, which weren’t insured. Gentile had insurance and plans to restore the house.

Enter the Garden Grove AARP, which strongly opposes fireworks in the city. But rather than merely sympathize with Matua, it opted to connect to him with a richness of deed that it may not fully grasp.

Members decided to hold the sale. They knew that selling jigsaw puzzles and outdated books likely wouldn’t put much of a dent in Matua’s need for family clothes and furnishings.

But they tried.

The effort wasn’t lost on Matua. “My heart cries right now,” he says outside the meeting room where about 45 seniors -- one as old as 91 -- were gathered. “I do not know anyone in there. They have poured their hearts out, bringing things they own to help build something. They’ve gone out of their way to help my family.”

He was touched because he knows most of the seniors aren’t wealthy. “Look in there,” he says. “The aura in there is to help.”

That’s a good aura. It seemed to me that the seniors were distilling generosity to its purest form.

“I told Josh that we were going to have a white elephant sale for him, but that we probably wouldn’t raise a lot of money,” chapter Vice President Sharon Tanihara says. “When I told him we weren’t going to make much money, he said, ‘All I want is a hug.’ That just blew me away.”

One of the members who donated and bought was Joyce Eastman. She donated a couple of pictures, a broach and a vase. “Because seniors don’t have that much money, they have something like this so they can make some money,” she says. “They can help someone in need, where just asking them to give could be hard.”

She ponied up $3 for the string of raffle tickets and won. Her haul: a pocket calculator and a couple books. She gave a look that said, “I don’t really need them.”

Precisely the point.

Matua thanked the group and offered his services. “I’m big, I’m strong,” he told them, quite convincing at 320 pounds. “I can lift a rock.”

What he meant was, he could do yardwork or chores. He and his girlfriend and 7-month-old son now are in a one-bedroom apartment in Westminster.

When all was said and done, the group raised $542, including a contribution of $100 from its treasury, and bolstered by donations from other people who heard of the sale. I overheard one conversation in which someone said he put $100 in the jar.

I hope I’m making the point that this isn’t about money. It surely wasn’t to Matua.

“Someone shaking your hand, putting their hand on your shoulder,” he says. “Do you know how good that feels? I try not to put my problems on anybody, but I’m just so thankful. It’s a breath of fresh, fresh air.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.