A few days in the mountains

In less than two weeks, Andy Alatorre will have finished the fourth grade, will hopefully have beaten his speed-typing record of 61 words per minute and will be happily on a bus headed back to summer camp.

“I felt like I was at home,” Andy said of his first time at Salvation Army Summer Camp last year.

Andy, who is 10, lives with his grandparents, both of whom work for the Salvation Army Red Shield Community Center in the Pico Union district near downtown Los Angeles, an area that is one of the most densely populated and impoverished areas in the county.

Andy is one of 1,600 low-income children from the Salvation Army Southern California division who will receive a grant to go to camp this year.

More than 2,000 children, ages 7 to 17, will spend a week at one of three Salvation Army Summer Camps in the Santa Monica Mountains, with sessions held from June 25 to Aug. 13. Campers spend the week swimming, hiking and sleeping in cabins nestled among more than 540 acres of wilderness near the ocean.

“A lot of the kids have never seen the beach,” said camp director Mark Lewis. “I look in their eyes and I can see how excited they are when they finally get up to camp.”

Campers earn points for helping out with activities during the week, such as cleaning tables and stacking plates after dinner.

“They just don’t come to swim and play basketball, they come to learn values,” Lewis said. “We encourage interaction and pro-social behavior.”

Andy’s cabin earned points last summer for helping pick up trash around camp and was awarded ice cream and a medal at the end of the week.

But between his good deeds, Andy made sure to find time to try new things at camp, such as fencing lessons and a long morning run.

“That was my favorite part. At 10 in the morning, all of us would meet and the run would start. It was all up in the mountains -- it was like a roller coaster,” Andy said. “Oh, we were so tired!”

Though Andy, whose favorite subjects in school are math and science, hopes one day to become a scientist, for now, he’s just happy to get back to camp and be with his friends.

“I was sad when I left. I met kids from, like, a lot of places.”

Thanks to the $1.7 million raised last year by the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign, about 8,000 children will go to camp in Southern California this summer.

The annual campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a fund of the McCormick Foundation, which matches all donations at 50 cents on the dollar. Unless requested otherwise, the Los Angeles Times Family Fund makes every effort to acknowledge donations of $100 or more received by Sept. 1 in the newspaper.

All donations will be acknowledged by mail in three to four weeks. Donations are tax deductible as permitted by law. Addresses will not be released or published. For more information, call (800) LA TIMES, Ext. 75771, or e-mail familyfund@latimes.com.

Mail donations using the form below (do not send cash) or donate online now at latimes.com/summercamp.

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nicole.loomis@latimes.com