Gifts for needy kids

Wednesday, Dec. 15, 1999 | 10:40 a.m.

Santa's helpers

The following agencies help the poor at Christmas time. Here is how to reach them if you want to donate or volunteer:

When you have no money to buy Christmas gifts for your children, you have to turn somewhere for help.

Linda Stowers, who was raised in Las Vegas, for the first time in her life found herself in need of such assistance.

She recently suffered a respiratory ailment that forced her to quit her customer service job in California and move back to Las Vegas.

"I hope next year I will be well and working and also will be able to do volunteer work to help others," the 48-year-old Stowers said as she filled out a half-page application at the Salvation Army to get free gifts for her 10-year-old daughter and 5-year-old grandson.

"It's tough asking for help, but sometimes you find yourself in a position were you have to."

Each year thousands of poor people throughout Las Vegas wait in lines at the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, Help of Southern Nevada and other agencies to sign up for free Christmas gifts for their children. Today was the last day of signups.

The organizations get applicants through referrals from agencies like Clark County Social Services, the Clark County School District, housing authorities, police departments and others.

Each year volunteers like Beverly Allen, a retired Strip hotel office worker, come to the Salvation Army to take the applications from the poor.

"Doing this volunteer work makes me grateful for my own life and thankful for what I have," said Allen, who for years has participated in the Salvation Army's Angel Tree program at Southern Nevada malls, buying gifts for the children of needy families.

Not surprisingly, Allen wound up sponsoring one of the families she recently signed up.

"The next day I went to the store and bought the gifts," she said.

Allen said the public has a misconception of the kind of people who seek help.

The applicants generally are not homeless people, as they have to provide the agencies with a utility bill to prove they live in town.

The number of children in need is not fabricated, because each applicant must provide birth certificates or similar identification.

The applicants, for the most part, are not unemployed, because they have to provide pay stubs to prove their family's income is below the poverty level. And some of them work for pretty wealthy companies.

For example, Allen took the application information from a mother of six who presented a two-week paycheck stub from the Bellagio hotel-casino, where she works as a cleaning woman and earns $731 take-home pay. Her husband was unemployed.

Assuming that her monthly pay was twice that, the woman and her husband could have netted an additional $2,800 that month and still have qualified as needy under the income guidelines used by the agencies to determine if a family is poor.

The income guidelines are based on a graduated scale. For instance, a family of three can earn up to $2,105 a month while a family of eight can earn up to $4,263 a month.

"You don't realize just how many people in Las Vegas need help until you do something like volunteer to sign up families for gifts for their children," Allen said.

"We are only going to be able to provide gifts for four of her children because two of them are older than 12, and 12 years old is our limit."

Catholic Charities helps children up to age 18 as does Help of Southern Nevada. But the Salvation Army is by far the largest local provider of Christmas gifts to poor children, and it limits its assistance to the very young so it can reach more families.

Each child gets one clothing item and one toy that retails for under $30 through the Salvation Army. Catholic Charities requires its donors to give at least one gift per child but encourages them to buy more. Help of Southern Nevada places no limits on how many gifts its donors give to a family.

But because there are so many in need and so few agencies to help, each family seeking assistance is permitted to go to just one organization. They sign a waiver promising that they will not seek other assistance.

The agencies compare their lists of applicants through the United Way, which acts as a clearinghouse. Families caught double-dipping can be disqualified from the process.

Salvation Army social worker Loretta Wright is in charge of entering the applications into the computer and checking the names against the applicants to other agencies.

Her computer is not sophisticated enough to automatically flag the duplications. She must catch them from memory and by carefully searching the database.

"I usually see an address that looks familiar or a name will jump out at me," she said. "There are people who do try to take advantage of the system, and that makes it bad for the great majority who are honest.

"We really don't want to take anything away from the children. We want to help everyone we can. But we have to check carefully" because of a shortage of gifts.

Carol Sloan, who has been the Salvation Army's Family Services director for 12 years, said 2,000 children whose families signed up for assistance last year did not get help because the agency ran out of donated gifts.

"I cannot stand to think that 2,000 children this year will not be reached," Sloan said. "I wrote to every hotel-casino and others to make sure it does not happen again."

Last year the Salvation Army gave 17,455 new toys and 10,378 new clothing items to needy children at Christmas. The numbers about twice those just eight years ago, when gave poor children 9,364 toys and 4,937 clothing items.

Lt. Col. Maud Sullivan, who along with her husband Jim Sullivan runs the Clark County Chapter of the Salvation Army, says local agencies work together and are not in competition for the Christmas business as some may believe.

"If it weren't for the help we get from the Marine Corps Reserves Toys for Tots program, we wouldn't be able to meet the need," Sullivan said. "They provide us with a couple thousand toys every year. They do a great job for everyone.

"For our application process, we see 200 families a day the first weeks (in late November) and after that it starts to funnel down to 150 a day, then 100 a day and down to 50 a day when we stop taking applications."

The gifts are given to the adult applicants on Dec. 22 and 23 at Cashman Center at a rate of 200 families an hour, Sullivan said.

Last year Catholic Charities helped 1,150 children with free gifts. This year its goal is to provide Christmas presents for 2,000 poor kids.

"We are still looking for donors for about a couple hundred children," said Marlene Richter, director of Social Services for Catholic Charities.

The agency, which has its own Angel Tree program at area churches, also will distribute gifts to about 250 homeless children at its St. Vincent's shelter on Christmas Eve. UNLV is buying gifts for about 100 of them, Richter said.

Help of Southern Nevada, a 29-year-old agency, limits its assistance to 500 families.

"The parents write an essay as to why their children should get gifts," Help spokeswoman Laramie Roberts said, noting that they also must fill out applications providing proof of residency and employment.

"The people who apply are making an effort but have endured real hardships."

Roberts said some of the applicants' stories can break your heart. This year's Help-sponsored families include:

"There are a lot of things that as a society we are not aware of," Roberts said.