EMPLOYEES 'WRITE THEIR OWN STORY' OF GIVING.

Byline: Lisa M. Sodders Staff Writer

CHATSWORTH - Volunteers manned a makeshift assembly line in the San Fernando Valley on Saturday morning to pack more than 2,000 boxes of donated food for charity.

Hoffman Brown Co., a Southern California insurance brokerage firm based in Sherman Oaks, collected the food and toiletry donations from Hain-Celestial Group, Great Circle Family Foods, Freund Baking Co. and Neutrogena over the past nine months.

Sandel Medical donated a warehouse in Chatsworth for HBC to store the items, and it was there that volunteers converged Saturday to package the items to give to several charities for the third annual ``HBC Feeds'' event.

``We do a community project every year; It's our way of giving back to the community,'' Lily Gastelum, 47, Sylmar, an HBC employee.

``We are the authors of our own life story,'' said HBC President Steve Brown, 43, of West Los Angeles. ``We get to write our story any way we want to and you can write it by doing good, or not.''

``If all of us just do a small amount, we can do great things when we do it all together,'' he told the crowd of about 100 HBC employees, spouses and children.

``Every company can do something like this,'' said Peggy Pratts, 45, of Simi Valley, whose husband, Joe, works for HBC. ``We started with 500 boxes (two years ago.)''

One team assembled cardboard boxes, while other employees took the boxes to another room. There, bags of rice and beans, canned goods, and boxes of breakfast cereal, granola bars and soup mix were arranged in stacks so volunteers could fill the boxes, assembly-line fashion, with one of each of the items.

At the end of the line, the boxes were sealed and placed on wooden pallets, ready for another volunteer with a forklift to transport to waiting trucks in the parking lot.

Brown's daughters Abby, 12, and Tracie, 8, helped, along with their friends, Ali Slagle, 11, and Leah Nordman, 8, both of Los Angeles.

``We can't go and help people in Iraq, but this makes us feel that we can help someone in our city,'' said Abby.

``Even though we're giving back to them, it makes us feel good as well because we're helping somebody,'' Ali said. ``You read the news and it all seems to be bad, but this makes you feel that there is good and young people can help and do something.''

HBC employees chose the charities they wanted to benefit, which included Healthy Start, Caring for Babies with AIDS, the West Valley Food Pantry, Domestic Violence Center of the Santa Clarita Valley, LA's BEST, and L.A. Family Housing, which provides transitional housing to homeless in the northeast San Fernando Valley. It serves nearly 14,500 people annually.

Jeffrey S. Farber, 45, of Los Angeles, chief operating officer for L.A. Family Housing, said the donation would be a tremendous help to his organization, which has seen an increase in demand for services. He estimated that L.A. Family Housing spends $200,000 a year to provide food for its clients, and a donation like this one means some of those funds can now go to provide other services.

The company also contacted the Red Cross, which will send 100 boxes to needy military families. Judy Houver, 56, of Porter Ranch said some military families who are just getting by lose social services when their military spouse is shipped overseas and gets a pay increase as a result.

``We feel we're helping the home front (while) our troops are helping us,'' said Houver, whose son-in-law, U.S. Marine Master Sgt. Randy Stevens, 43, is serving in Iraq.

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Aleen Balian, 10, of Northridge joins more than 40 Hoffman Brown Co. employees and their families on Saturday to pack boxes of food staples and toiletries for the needy.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer