Columnist Susan Snyder: Charities gearing up for holidays

Friday, Nov. 28, 2003 | 8:32 a.m.

Get enough to eat yesterday?

You're among the lucky, if you did.

If you're lucky enough to look forward to holiday shopping this weekend, why not add a few strangers to the list? Local charities could use the help.

"We serve 65,000 people a year, and it's going up," said Deni Conrad, executive director of HELP of Southern Nevada.

The holidays look bleak for thousands of Las Vegas-area families. Many adults holding down two or three service jobs still can't make ends meet.

"We see the families who are trying to take care of themselves and can't. One car repair throws the whole budget out the window," Conrad said.

HELP begins the Christmas donations push Monday. It provided Thanksgiving turkeys and food for roughly 3,000 households, but it wasn't easy. A three-day turkey drive by radio station KXPT 97.1-FM brought only half as many birds as last year, she said.

It wasn't for a lack of effort. Station representatives spent two 14-hour days and one 12-hour day staking out grocery store parking lots. They gathered 200 turkeys in Green Valley and 400 in the northwest area.

The last push was in Summerlin Saturday. But Gregg Hodges, from the station's morning show, was disappointed when only 108 turkeys had been donated by noon.

"People in Jaguars and Escalades are coming by and dropping off two cans of corn," he said. "When you're sitting down and enjoying your holiday meal, what is $20 to you?"

C'mon, how many cans of cheap creamed corn or stewed tomatoes go on your family's holiday table? If you can afford to give, you can afford to give well.

Catholic Charities plans to provide toys and food for about 1,000 families this Christmas. They served about 3,000 meals on Thanksgiving, and will do the same on Christmas Day, spokeswoman Sharon Mann said.

"We have had a 40 percent increase in people asking for help, and we have had a 10 percent decrease in donations," she said.

And the Salvation Army actually ran out of food one day earlier this month and had to close two hours early, Charlie Desiderio, spokesman, said. It's a domino effect. When other social services or charities fall short, people look to the Salvation Army, which is still recovering from a devastating warehouse fire earlier this year.

"We have been serving double the number of people. We usually see 100 to 110 people a day. Now we're seeing 100 people by noon," Desiderio said Monday.

It doesn't help that an annual community food drive on which the Salvation Army typically depends is splitting the collection with another charity this year, he said.

So there are plenty of ways to wrap help this year. For a complete list, look under "charities" in the Sprint Yellow Pages. A few include:

HELP of Southern Nevada: Call 369-4357, Ext. 229, to make a donation, adopt a family or adopt a senior citizen or single adult.

Catholic Charities: Call 383-0766 to adopt a family. Call 382-0721 to adopt a senior citizen.

Salvation Army: Call 870-4430, Ext. 23, to make a donation or adopt a family. The agency's "Angel Trees" will be in area malls this weekend.

Shade Tree: Call 385-0072.

Safe Nest: Call 257-3800.