Cash is tight, but I’ll try . . . Love, Santa

The Santa Claus of this bleak desert outpost wears a polo shirt with a pack of Camel Lights in the pocket and a pair of suspenders stretched tight over his stomach. Larry Bai is 60, balding and Jewish. He shuffles through the post office doors this blustery morning, gripping a cane topped with a lion’s head.

He opens Santa’s post office box, No. 133. There are eight more letters. Bai will respond to each writer who includes a return address, and, on behalf of the Pahrump Valley Lions Club, he’ll buy hundreds of presents, wrap them in snowman-patterned paper and deliver them across the town. Here in Nye County, whose 10.5% unemployment rate is the state’s second-highest, those may be the only presents some children get.

Bai’s annual effort is harder this year: The club has raised $2,000 -- half of last year’s total. The group reluctantly cut about a fifth of the eligible kids by dropping the maximum age to 10 from 14. Bai’s wife, Sue, who’s in charge of shopping, is spending $10 on each child instead of $12 to $15. Larry has resolved to dip into his own pocket if need be.

Charities big and small are experiencing the same disjunction this Christmas: What do you do when folks give less but need more? Across Nevada’s vast rural stretches, jobs are scarce. Construction work in particular has vanished. There are few social service groups, and most are starved for funds.

The holidays look so grim that this Santa gets letters from cash-strapped parents.

Dear Santa,

I am writing you on behalf of my 2-year-old son. Things have been kind of tuff this year with my husband out of work. My son . . . likes anything that’s cars, tractors, trucks and construction equipment [toys] . . . . Thank you so much.

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Checking it twice

On a recent afternoon, Larry drives his yellow Saturn Vue to a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Salvation Army bells clang. Wheels on shopping carts screech. Parents add a chorus of “Put that back!”

Sue, a 57-year-old bank manager, and her friend, Debbie Martinez, roam the aisles with two shopping carts and spreadsheets listing about 100 letter writers and their requests. Sue sticks closely to the kids’ wishes -- though girls hoping for baby sisters get baby dolls instead. The boy who asked for “15 screws and one hammer” will unwrap a football, his other request. More than ever she considers her budget; it settles so many decisions.

Sue halts at a wall of biking kneepads. A teenager had asked Santa for a pair. He’s too old for the Lions Club program, but his younger siblings are getting gifts.

She turns to Larry. “We’ve got these families with kids under 10 and kids over 10,” she says, her palms upturned. Some of the children have written to Santa for years.

“You can’t leave them out,” he says. The women agree. Martinez, a 50-year-old homemaker who was in a Miami Dolphins sweat shirt, spots a pair of black Mongoose gel pads. They’re $9.96.

Sue scans the list to see whether other kids might be too old for a gift. “You want to take care of every child that asks for something,” she sighs, “but you just can’t.”

The women pass on a Cooking Essentials 20-piece baking set ($19.74), a Super Grover Building Set ($15.97) and most cupcake-makers -- all too pricey. Martinez offers to tackle the rest of the list at KB Toys, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

“They said on TV they’re hoping to get rid of all the toys before Christmas,” she says.

“We can help them with that,” Sue replies.

In the checkout line, the women pay $274.67 for 41 items. Talk turns to their after-lunch destination: the clothing aisles.

“There’s a woman with five or six kids and her husband’s out of work,” Martinez says. Her voice catches. “She’s got 14-month-old twins.”

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Letters aplenty

Larry heads home while the women stay and shop. Nevada 160, Pahrump’s main drag, is lined with small casinos, chain retailers, a strip club with castlelike turrets and rocky lots with “For Sale” signs.

He and Sue moved from Victorville to Pahrump, an unincorporated town of 40,000 west of Las Vegas, in the late ‘90s when Sue got a job at Community Bank of Nevada. Their married daughter and two grandchildren live in Las Vegas.

The Bais live in a single-story salmon-colored home with a red-tile roof, rock landscaping and palm trees. The Letters to Santa program has commandeered their living room, which holds rolls of Christmas paper, wrapped boxes and an unwrapped stuffed pig that snores.

Larry launched the program in 2002; the idea had come from his Lions Club in Apple Valley. The first year, 35 kids wrote letters. Last year, there were 700. Larry has responded to about 2,000. (He draws the line at wearing a Santa costume. Someone else appears at school events and the town’s holiday festival, Pahrump-A-Pum-Pum.)

The 2008 letters cover Larry’s kitchen table. Some arrived in July. One girl wrote on Cheetah Girls stationery. Another mailed a Littlest Pet Shop flier with her favorite toys circled. A boy offered a numbered list of 40 options. One child asked for a polar bear.

The Lions Club sometimes singles out a kid whose plight is particularly severe.

This year, it’s hard to choose one letter. A girl wrote asking for a wheelchair ramp. A grandmother begged for size-small underwear for her grandson and size-6 or -7 socks for her teenage daughter.

Some writers confided in Santa the way they might in a priest.

Dear Santa,

My Mom got into a really bad car accident a few months ago. . . . She was hospitalized and was in critical condition. She had to pay many hospital bills and was fired from her old job for disability and was unemployed for about five months. Since we couldn’t afford much . . . I am asking for your help on this one thing.

A mother of three wrote from across the country. Larry’s not sure how she found him and plans to notify a Lions Club in New York.

To whom it may concern,

I am in a state of dire need. I am not working right now and do not have money to buy toys for my kids. We live humbly in the Bronx, N.Y.

I beg of you from the heart if you are able to help me give my kids a merry Christmas with some toys for them to play with.

Larry finds himself staring at the letters and framing Santa’s answers for days. When he finally writes back, he doesn’t save copies -- the responses stay between Santa and the kids.

For weeks, he’s been typing in his cluttered office and watching CNBC. One colors the other. Bailout money, campaign contributions, CEO salaries . . . even a fraction of that money could make such a difference to so many kids’ Christmases.

If there’s any hope this year, Larry says, it’s that some kids are learning there are things more important than what they want for Christmas.

Hi, Santa:

How are you? . . . If you can bring me these toys it’s okay but if you can’t I understand because there is a lot of kids without toys. How are your reindeer too?

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ashley.powers@latimes.com