EDITORIAL - THE LAST WORD:In the giving spirit

With less than a week to go until Christmas, an Orange County organization that collects toys for several charities let it be known they were seriously short on donations. That’s when the toys started pouring in.

We could have predicted that.

Giving seems to be as natural as sea breezes in these communities. And it starts with the young.

Across Newport-Mesa, kids displayed a generous holiday spirit. Students at many schools held toy drives, or did chores to earn money to buy toys for Spark of Love. Lincoln Elementary School students, for example, raised money for phone cards so kids at Camp Pendleton could talk to parents serving in Iraq and elsewhere.

It’s easy to see where these youngsters learned about giving and caring.

Just look Newport Coast’s Sclafani family and their friends, who used the money they would have spent on presents for each other to buy bicycles for needy kids — 625 of them this year.

Or how about those Costa Mesa city employees? They collectively donated 400 hours of their own paid time off so their co-worker Brad Long would continue to receive a paycheck after his three weeks of sick leave ran out in September.

Kids notice those examples of giving, and they’ll remember them when the holidays roll around again.

We can predict that one too.