Adopt-A-Family Program Delivers Holiday Joy : Giving: Harbor Regional Center finds sponsors for 250 families who have disabled loved ones and pressing financial needs.

It’s two days until Christmas and 11-year-old Bambi Thomas already has a bike and a Barbie doll. Her brother, Pierre, has a silver scooter. And cousin Tyrell, well, he just keeps smiling about all the presents he got this year: the roller skates, a radio, red tennis shoes.

Tyrell, an autistic 13-year-old, is the reason this year’s holidays include dozens of gifts for him and his family from people they barely know. The gifts fill the family’s two-bedroom apartment at Dana Strand Village in Wilmington.

“It’s so wonderful,” Tyrell’s grandmother, Vivian Jackson, says, watching her grandchildren play with their toys. “It’s a blessing, it really is,” adds her daughter Shirley, Tyrell’s mother.

The toys were among the presents given to the family last week by Los Angeles Harbor College--one of more than 100 sponsors of a special holiday program providing gifts, food, clothing and even small checks to South Bay families with developmentally disabled parents or children.

The Adopt-A-Family program is sponsored by Harbor Regional Center, a state-funded, nonprofit agency in Torrance that serves about 5,000 developmentally disabled people in the area. The center, founded in 1977, provides counseling, referral and other services to people disabled by autism, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, severe epilepsy or other neurological disorders. The clients range in age from infants to senior citizens.

The center’s program began in late 1986 when the Soroptimists of Del Amo/Torrance contacted Harbor Regional about sponsoring one of the center’s families for the holidays, said John Kauffman, the center’s outreach coordinator. “They said they’d like to do something at Christmas as a project,” Kauffman said. “And the program just grew from there.”

This year, the program will serve its largest number ever--250 families selected by the center’s counselors. The families, Kauffman said, not only have disabled parents or children but pressing financial problems. “They are the very neediest of the people we serve,” he said.

Chris’ family is an example.

Last year, the Artesia teen-ager was nearly killed in a gang attack near his home, run down by a pickup truck as he rode his bicycle with a friend. Chris, 14, suffered profound brain damage in the attack, which was aimed at his friend, who belonged to a gang.

“One day, he’s a normal kid and the next day, he’s in a hospital almost dead,” said Chris’ mother Eva, a single mother of four who asked that her family’s last name not be used because her son’s attackers remain at large.

The incident left Chris unable to walk or talk. It also devastated his family, financially and emotionally.

Eight months after the attack, as the family struggled with the new and staggering responsibilities of caring for Chris, Harbor Regional’s Kauffman went to their home. He brought with him food, a check for $100 and Christmas gifts including a radio for Chris, who has always loved music.

Brenda Smiley, a Harbor Regional counselor, recalled, “After they got the presents, Eva called me up and said, ‘You know, I was really starting to give up. I felt like we were headed down a long, dark hole. But when the gifts came, I realized it was a tunnel because there was light at the other end.’ ”

“What really made my heart drop was the check,” Eva added in an interview. “I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know there were people like that out there.

“I have a load on my shoulders, but I’m strong enough for that. Sympathy, I don’t need,” she said. “But the help they gave me was fantastic.”

The program, according to Harbor Regional officials, not only helps the families through the holidays but serves as an unexpected acknowledgement of what they endure in caring for a disabled relative.

“Having a developmentally disabled person in a family is very disruptive. The person requires a lot of attention,” Kauffman said. “And this is a time when that is acknowledged by others. Suddenly, this person who you’ve been caring for all year is bringing something to the family.”

The program, center officials said, also provides the disabled with new self-esteem. “One of the ways to stimulate the return of anybody’s functions is to build significant events into their life,” Smiley said. “So this program really seems to improve the client’s self-image, because they understand that people really do care, that people want them to have a nice holiday.

“And that helps to strengthen the relationships within the family. Life gets happier for everybody,” she said.

In Chris’ case, the gifts--particularly the portable radio--were catalysts in overcoming severe depression that followed him home from the hospital last year, Smiley said.

“He went through some serious depression, of course, as he was beginning to recuperate,” she said. “Now he’s got his smile back. And that’s good.”

Finally, according to Smiley and others, the program helps bring the travails of the developmentally disabled to the attention of other families, family sponsors and service groups. “It gives people some idea of what it’s like, and they see the similarities between themselves and the disabled are more striking than the differences,” Kauffman said.

“Every kid likes to celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah,” he said. “Everyone likes to have clothes to wear and food to eat.”