Santa remembers forgotten children

Tina McClure was feeling pretty glum about Christmas with only a handful of presents for her 10 kids under the crooked little aluminum tree somebody had given her.

So yesterday morning, she kept looking out her window, hoping that Santa would come.

She wasn't sure if he would, though. This Santa calls ahead, and her phone had been turned off.

McClure, 37, works as a cook in a nursing home, and in some ways things had looked up since last Christmas. She'd been able to move herself, and her kids, from an apartment in Lynnwood to a four-bedroom ranch house in Edmonds.

But around the end of the month, the $1,000 she makes a month and the roughly $250 she gets from welfare, starts to run out.

"I try to work as many doubles as I can," she said.

She leaves on those days at 4:30 a.m. and doesn't get home until 8:30 p.m.

Still, she doesn't make enough to get the Jeep Cherokee that sits in the driveway fixed. "It's dead," her husband, Tony King, 31, says. "So is my car. It's kind of like a junkyard around here." She walks the 45 minutes each way to and from work.

For the working poor, Christmas can be hard.

"We haven't had a tree before, so I'm glad someone gave us that one," McClure said. But she looked sadly at its bent aluminum branches yesterday, with a few red balls spaced far apart.

"I almost broke down a couple of times yesterday," she said. "I wish I could do more.

"I'm OK with what we have, but I wonder what my kids think about me, that they're wondering, 'Why don't we have more presents?' Maybe they think I'm selfish or something."

She worried what she'd tell the kids if Santa didn't come.

Thirty years ago, though, another struggling mother had to come up with a story to tell her son when Santa didn't come.

"Dear Santa," the boy wrote, "Moma said you got lost last year and couldn't find your way to our house and we wrilly mist you aspeshely my little sisters. Pleas come this year. We are beaing very good.

"Moma sais youll get lost again maybe. So hear is a map."

Somehow, the letter ended up getting mixed up in the mail that arrived at Francisco's, a Seattle joint that was a watering hole frequented by the likes of Don Rall and Ron Rall, twins and both amateur boxers in their day.

"We thought, 'We got to do something for these kids,' " Don Rall recalled yesterday.

The FBI agents and the cops who used to throw a few back at the bar tried to find the boy, named Craig.

"We never found Craig," Don Rall said, "So we decided we should do what we could for maybe five families." They bought some fresh turkeys for dinner but found out a lot of the homes didn't have ovens. So since then, they've stuck to toys.

The program, called The Forgotten Children's Fund, has grown over the years, and yesterday volunteer Santas accompanied by a few volunteer elves delivered toys to about 600 families in mostly in King and Snohomish counties, but also around Tacoma and in Chelan.

Around the time McClure was wondering whether Santa was coming, there were actually 30 Santas gathering at 8:30 a.m. in an empty store in a strip mall in Bellevue.

Some of the early Santas are "rounding third base," said Ron Rall. He and his brother are 72.

But in the men's room, where a sign on the door said "Santa's Dressing Room," Danny Shelby, 30, passed Eric McCullough, who's 5-foot-9 and weighs 170 pounds, and who wore two life vests around his middle. "I'm too skinny," he said. Shelby, a Whidbey Island firefighter, is also too fit to be Santa. So he put on a couple of life vests too.

A little later, the Santas wore bushy white beards and red suits, and listened to one of the original Santas, Dick North.

"This is a chance to help the working poor, and it's not hard to find them. That's why we get 5,000 applications and have to get down to 600 families," North said. "When you leave here, make sure you feel good. Carry that feeling and the good will into people's homes. If you have a problem, leave it here."

Shelby said he's been coming since he was 15, first helping load the trucks, then driving them on their deliveries. His father, who played a Santa for 10 years, is driving the truck this year. Shelby's mother is driving the van that carries Santa, his wife Colleen; his uncle, Dan Hauff; and his wife, Carol Hauff.

About marrying into the Claus family, Colleen said, "I came along sometimes when Santa was courting me. But I didn't completely realize what I was signing up for."

A little later they arrived in front of a house in Edmonds with a broken-down Jeep Cherokee in the driveway and a crooked aluminum Christmas tree in the window.

Inside the house, Tina saw Santa Claus step out. "She was jumping around. 'Santa's here. Santa's here.' " King said later. "She was more excited than the kids."

Santa, a bit nervous making one of his first deliveries -- "It's a lot of responsibility," he said -- asked his mom how he looked. When she said, "Ho, ho, ho. Looks pretty good," Santa walked in, followed by the elves.

"Hi Santa!" the kids said and unwrapped their packages to find games, poker sets, and backpacks, while the elves stacked presents under the crooked little tree until the boxes of glistening paper rose over the second set of branches.

Latina, McClure's 3-month-old daughter, was on Santa's knees, tugging at his beard. Tina's mother, Mary McClure, tried to get her off so Santa could leave, but Latina didn't want to let go.

"Boy, she really had a grip on his beard," Mary McClure said, finally prying her granddaughter away.

P-I reporter Kery Murakami can be reached at 206-448-8131 or kerymurakami@seattlepi.com

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