To all you Santas out there, thanks
Juan Payan, a 7-year old from Watts, is not what a journalist
would call a good quote.
"Juan, did you have fun today?"
"Yes."
"What did you do?"
"Played."
"Why was it so much fun?"
"It was fun."
Like all 7-year olds, Juan may not be a conversationalist yet,
but his gap-toothed grin, glowing as he ripped open a brown grocery
bag that revealed a football and a wiffle ball with bat made up for
it all.
Juan was one of the hundreds of kids who benefited from the
kindness of the UCLA community that participated in the Daily Bruin
Toy Drive which I wrote of in early November.
Kids just like Juan, including his brothers Alejandro, 8, Jesus,
9, Danny and Raul, 4-month old twins, and his sister, Gladys, 12,
all received toys through the fourth annual Project Santa Claus, a
program that distributes toys each year to underprivileged children
in South Central Los Angeles.
This year I had the honor of attending a day-long carnival that
entertains kids who use the clinic at the Martin Luther King Jr.
hospital, and then watching the kids line up to get a bag of toys
from S. Claus himself.
Many of the toys furnished at the carnival and given by Santa
were made possible because of the tremendous outpouring of kindness
by readers of this column. And I would like to thank you.
To give you the laundry list, the drive generated over 300 toys,
including 34 footballs, 26 basketballs, 38 stuffed animals, 16
board games, 4 kites, 10 frisbees, books, hats, action figures,
Slinkies and even a Mr. Potato Head. On top of that, we received
almost 300 sets of Pogs, 288 bottles of bubbles, 216 packs of
crayons to go along with the 216 coloring books, in addition to
Koosh paddles and hacky sacks.
In all, there were over 1,000 items donated, thanks in large
part to anonymous and solicited donations by campus groups and area
companies.
Among the thanks that must be doled out is a big one to Tom
Davidson of PlayCo Toys, the father of UCLA senior Erik Davidson,
whose kindness and willingness to help was surpassed only by his
ability to help. The coloring books, crayons, bubbles, Koosh
equipment and over $300 in toys were the result of his
endeavors.
Closer to home, I have to thank Betsy Boettger and Bruin Belles,
who generated almost 70 toys for the drive, including many that I
had on my Christmas list. The Belles’ help was supplemented by the
efforts of Phi Psi fraternity, which also ran a clothing drive
before break, UCLA alumna Jennifer Kron, who mailed down 30-plus
toys from the Bay Area when she learned of the drive.
Even those loosely affiliated with UCLA stepped up to help.
Sharon Jones, mother of former Bruin sports writer and current UCLA
law student, Greg Jones, read my plea for help to her eighth grade
class at Palos Verdes Intermediate School. To put it in sports
terms, her class clutched up to surprise me with 65 toys on the
last day of the drive. The late shipment helped overflow the car
that I drove to pick them up.
Even Jones’ daughter, Robin, got in the act. A sports writer
herself at the Daily Cal at Berkeley, Robin collected 60 toys for a
shelter in Oakland.
The efforts of all these people, of course, couldn’t have been
made possible without someone to help distribute the toys. And
that’s where Marsha Guess and Alicia Easley come in. The two
medical students were the co-chairs of Project Santa Claus ’94, the
program that organizes the carnival and Santa’s Ho-Ho-Ho’s for the
kids in Watts.
After the kids left for the day, Easley, Guess and other
helpers
took toys to the hospital for the ill children unable to go
outside for the festivities.
What makes their efforts remarkable indeed is that the drive
takes place in the heat of their second-year med-school finals. The
program is run almost exclusively by med students at both UCLA and
Charles R. Drew University, which, along with the MLK hospital,
forms the King-Drew Medical Center in Watts.
The Medical Center is responsible for educating hundreds of area
youth in programs like the Saturday Science Academy, which they
call "part of the pipeline," to get kids interested in science at
an early age.
Hours of effort ultimately come together and culminate with kids
like Juan Payan tearing breathlessly into a bag to find toys they
might not otherwise receive.
"Oh it’s a lot of work," Guess says, "and it gets frustrating
because people always forget about the community. But if you see
the kids faces, you just look down and see their smiles, you forget
about it all. It makes it all worthwhile."
Guess, Easley, Davidson, the Joneses, Bruin Belles, Phi Psi,
Kron, my oft-pestered friends and family, they are the mentionable,
and deserve thanks.
But perhaps more thanks is due to those not identifiable by name
 the faceless contributors who helped make 500 children smile
like all children smile when wrapping paper is discarded and a toy
is revealed.
500 smiling kids. Not counting me. Our thanks.