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By Darcy Ellis
Editor
12-20-2008 Pre-Christmas preparations have entered the home-stretch, which for many local nonprofit agencies means ensuring the less fortunate of us have food on the table and presents under the tree come Dec. 25.
While certain high-profile efforts to deliver holiday tidings and essentials to households in need have met with success this season, others are still shy of their goals with Christmas just five days away.
Inyo-Mono Advocates for Community Action, in addition to having provided both Thanksgiving and Christmas food “baskets” to needy families, is in the process of sorting the thousands of gifts generously donated by residents and visitors to anonymous underprivileged children Benton in Mono County to Tecopa in Death Valley. Those presents, donated as part of the 13th Annual Wish Tree Program, will be delivered to grateful households on Tuesday by local volunteers, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, Bishop Police and California Highway Patrol officers and Caltrans employees.
According to IMACA Wish Tree Coordinator Cynthia Valdivia, all but 83 of the Wish Tree “bulbs” were adopted this year and IMACA fully expected to be able to come up with the remaining money needed to cover those Christmas gift requests by Tuesday.
“It went really well,” she said of the 13th annual effort. “People came through like they always do.”
At The Inyo Register, where the newspaper has hosted a Wish Tree in its lobby for all 13 years of the program, close to 200 bulbs were adopted, with residents returning thousands of dollars worth of presents for the children assigned to those bulbs.
“The generosity was overwhelming,” said Classifieds Manager Cynthia Hurdle-Sampietro. “We always have amazing participation, and every year people can’t wait for the program to start.”
Not all of the bulbs were adopted, but Hurdle-Sampietro chalks that up to the economy and financial hardship that seems to be more prevalent this Christmas.
“People are having a hard time just buying for their own families,” she said.
People are having such a hard time, said Salvation Army Lt. Rob Lawler, that his group currently has about 31 families who, for various reasons, did not get signed up for IMACA’s Wish Tree and also need help in getting something to put under their Christmas trees.
Many of the families are new to the area, Lawler explained, and weren’t familiar with the Wish Tree program. There were also plenty who just “didn’t expect to be short (on cash) a month ago when Wish Tree sign-ups happened,” he said.
These folks include the recently unemployed and those suffering from cutbacks at work and the effects of a slow local service industry due to the lack of travelers heading to Mammoth Mountain.
As of this writing, the Salvation Army still needed assistance in fulfilling Christmas wishes for approximately 15 local families by Monday.
Lawler said the biggest need is for toys and clothing for children in the 5 and under and 8 and older age ranges. Residents can also donate cash instead of gifts if they prefer, and the Salvation Army will do the shopping.
Gift-giving opportunities to bring joy to less fortunate older residents are still available this year via Mountain High Video’s Giving Tree, another project of the Salvation Army.
According to Mountain High Video employee Monroe Prange, the idea behind the tree is to fulfill the Christmas wishes of area senior citizens and special needs adults – members of the community who sometimes might be overlooked during the holiday gift-giving season.
Bulbs for 10 seniors and special needs adults remained on the tree as of Friday, with distribution of the gifts by the Salvation Army set for Monday or Tuesday.
In addition to providing older residents as well as struggling families and their children the pleasure of having presents to open on Christmas morning, the Salvation Army is still trying to collect food items to distribute to residents who are also in need of sustenance on the holidays.
“Families are still coming in for food,” Lawler said, “some that we’ve never seen before,” either because they’re new to the area or they’ve never needed help in the past.”
Aside from relying on donations from the public, one of the major ways the Salvation Army keeps its food bank stocked is with funds raised through its annual Red Kettle Drive – which has been suffering this season from a lack of volunteers willing to man the stations posted around Bishop.
At the request of Lawler, the Rotary Club of Bishop stepped up to provide some much-needed manpower by volunteering to ring bells for donations last Saturday.
According to Rotarian Pat Nahin, a sign-up sheet was circulated at the noon Rotary meeting on Dec. 9 and was quickly filled.
Last Saturday, Brad Mettam, dressed up as an elf, and Thaddeus Taylor were joined by Rotarian Dana Crom’s sons, Frankie and Joey Harvey, at the Bishop Kmart.
For more information about the Red Kettle program, contact the Salvation Army in Bishop at (760) 872-2124. Food, toy and clothing donations, meanwhile, can be brought to the Salvation Army headquarters in the Town & Country Center, 621 W. Line St., Ste. 106, from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Mountain High Video’s Giving Tree will be up all weekend. The store is located in the Town & Country Center, 621 W. Line St., Ste. 109.
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