Hermosa Beach eighth-graders bring packs o’ plenty to Skid Row
Kainoa Crow, Zachary Dias, Alex Liou, Andrew Nachman, Jonathan Nachman, Finn Sullivan, Cole Slusser, Cole Trundgen, Charlie Webb and Shane Weber gather in front of a portion of the 300 backpacks they donated to Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row. Photo courtesy Missy Wuertz
Arriving back to Hermosa Beach from Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, Finn Sullivan was struck both by the suffering he saw, as well as how little distance separated him from it.
“It’s crazy how you can drive 30 minutes, and go from Hermosa Beach to a place where people are sleeping on the street in tents,” the Hermosa Valley eighth grader said.
Sullivan was one of 10 Hermosa eighth graders who recently collected and delivered more than 300 backpacks to the Union Rescue Mission, a shelter located on San Pedro Street in the heart of Skid Row. The students had a chance to deliver the backpacks to the mission’s residents, then take a tour and learn about the facility.
The students — Kainoa Crow, Zachary Dias, Alex Liou, Andrew Nachman, Jonathan Nachman, Sullivan, Cole Slusser, Cole Trundgen, Charlie Webb and Shane Weber — are mostly eighth graders at Hermosa Valley. (The Nachman brother attend Chadwick.) Over the last few weeks, they have been collecting backpacks from the community and filling them with clothing, blankets, and toiletries.
The materials were suggested by the shelter, and the students said they saw them as providing a bit of dignity to those facing a night on the street.
“Everybody should be treated equally. Everybody should at least have the chance to clean themselves up,” Slusser said.
The project began with a desire for something new. Over the past several years, several of the families of the students involved have chosen a charity to volunteer at, said Cyndi Wills, Sullivan’s mother. In recent years, they have volunteered at Feed My Starving Children, a nonprofit dedicated to packaging and distributing food to hungry people in developing nations. This year, they decided to do something they could make their own.
Wills said she gave Sullivan the choice of what charity to pursue, hoping that choosing a project would help him bond with it.
“I really don’t want to make him do charitable works, but to encourage him to do good so that it’s something he’ll want to continue in the future. In the beginning, it was like, ‘Okay, this is what I pick.’ But once he’d decided on something, you could see a change. He was in charge, he was saying, ‘Yes, I want to get involved.’ Once he made that choice, he felt pride, he felt encouraged, and just wanted to do it,” Wills said.
The group began coordinating with Union Rescue Mission and set a goal of 180 backpacks, one for each of the mission’s residents. They quickly got to 100 when donations started to slow. They worried for a bit, but a coordinated social media campaign and some attention from KCBS helped to spread the word. In the final days, backpacks were pouring in from all over the community, Wills said.
The crew ended up with 312 backpacks. The extra will be given out among the many homeless people in the area for whom Union Rescue does not have beds.
The kids said that most of the people who received backpacks were thankful, although a few had trouble expressing their gratitude. Many of those at the mission, they learned, suffered from drug problems or mental illness, but were receiving treatment.
“The guy giving the tour at the end said, ‘You might not see thankfulness, but believe me, it’ll help them in the long run,’” Liou said.