LAGUNA BEACH : Volunteering Is a Way of Life, and Fun, for ‘Woman of Year’

On Memorial Day, Sande St. John was up at 6 a.m. and off to a breakfast at Heisler Park to raise money for the prevention of child abuse. While others ate, she distributed fliers about a coming fund-raiser for an injured Laguna Beach boy.

After the breakfast, St. John delivered flowers to the veterans’ American Legion Hall and took leftover bouquets to South Coast Medical Center for elderly patients.

After visiting with the sick until about 4 p.m., St. John zipped over to the Fire Department to encourage firefighters to help collect food and clothing for some Yorba Linda residents whose homes were recently destroyed by fire.

As the day wound down, she collected auction items from local businesses for a high school fund-raiser.

It was not an unusual day for Sande St. John, who on Friday will be honored by the Woman’s Club of Laguna Beach with its first Woman of the Year Award.

St. John, 51, is well-known throughout the community for her work helping children, seniors, local businesses and the homeless.

In addition to directing a sack lunch distribution program for the needy and delivering food to seniors, she is involved in a host of community groups.

“If something needs to be done, she just goes and does it,” said Marsha Bode, who ran the a lunch distribution program before St. John took it over last year. “Everybody says, ‘Just go see Sande.’ ”

So adept is St. John at getting the job--any job--done, that one couple hoping to adopt a baby had flyers printed with their picture on them and gave them to St. John to distribute.

St. John will also receive the Golden Deeds Award from the Exchange Club in July.

“I’d say this is the year of Sande St. John, at least in Laguna Beach,” said Joe Orsak, president of the Chamber of Commerce.

St. John, whose three children are grown, usually has food, clothing, toys and even chocolate for chocolate lovers stashed in the trunk of her 1978 Mercedes to distribute as needed.

Friend Sandy Thornton said St. John takes a personal interest in those she helps, even trying to accommodate a street person who is a vegetarian or prefers wheat bread.

“She helps on a personal level,” Thornton said. “It’s not just, ‘Here’s your food and see you later.’ ”

St. John is also having a good time.

“I leave my house probably at 7 or 8 in the morning and I come home when it’s dark,” St. John said. “People say, ‘Don’t you ever go out?’ Well I am out. . . . I’m having fun.”

On holidays, St. John and Thornton--known collectively as “the Sandys”--don costumes and circulate through town blowing bubbles or flinging glitter.

“I think she’s just really got a good heart,” Bode said. “She wants us to have a better town, both for the business and for people who don’t have very much. Plus, it’s fun. She wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun.”