Sharing and caring

Volunteers with Share Our Selves collect, deliver toys for needy local families.FAIRGROUNDS -- A child’s imaginings of the North Pole might look something like this.

Though Costa Mesa lacks snow and polar bears, an elf might not have been too out of place at the Orange County Fairgrounds on Friday when members of Share Our Selves and several volunteers lined the walls of two large buildings with bicycles, board games and other gifts donated for needy families in Costa Mesa and Santa Ana.

However, Liz Phillips, coordinator for Share Our Selves’ Adopt-a-Family program, thought of a much different metaphor for the day’s activities.

“We sort of call today D-Day,” she said. “It’s the drop-off and delivery day.”

Friday was the day for a series of cars, minivans and SUVs stuffed with food, toys and other gifts to line up at the fairgrounds, while an army of young volunteers equipped with hand trucks waited to unload the donated presents.

Share Our Selves used two large buildings as holiday warehouses to store the donations until they could be picked up by representatives of the Newport-Mesa and Santa Ana school districts. The day’s schedule called for the gifts to be delivered to local schools for pickup after being donated.

“The schools are the ones who really know who are the neediest,” Share Our Selves development director Karen Harrington said.

Share Our Selves is a Westside-based nonprofit that also provides medical and dental services. This is the 36th year that the group has conducted the Adopt-a-Family program, and about 1,200 families are expected to receive donations.

Share Our Selves found outside donors to take care of about 1,000 families and put together more packages to make sure the remainder received presents.

“Everybody gets adopted in the end,” Harrington said.

This year, Share Our Selves started working at the fairgrounds Tuesday, but preparations for Friday started weeks earlier. Share Our Selves volunteer Sue Epstein said she has been working full time since mid-November to make sure families get their gifts.

“It’s just a huge organizational issue,” Epstein said. “Every box that goes astray or piece of paper that gets lost is some child’s Christmas.”

* ANDREW EDWARDS covers business and the environment. He can be reached at (714) 966-4624 or by e-mail at andrew.edwards@latimes.com.

20051224irzcmmncDON LEACH / DAILY PILOT(LA)Lara James, left, and Jennifer Pease, sort gifts they dropped off at the Share Our Selves collection at the Orange County Fairgrounds on Friday.