FEEDING A NEED WITH GRACE.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

Grace Resource Center emergency food bank executive director Steve Baker sometimes draws stares in local markets.

Shopping around town for the best prices for his emergency food bank found Baker last week hauling two shopping carts loaded with food, including 300 pounds of pasta, 20 cases of fruit and 10 cases of tuna.

``People looked at me, and I said, `It's a special diet. Obviously it doesn't work,' '' the bearded and bespectacled Baker joked, making light of his rotund figure.

Colleagues say Baker's sense of humor as well as his kind, caring heart and a talent for winning people over to his cause all have served him well in more than five years he has been at the helm of the Grace Resource Center.

The center, sponsored by the Antelope Valley Christian Ministerial Association, opened in July 1991 in a 4,000-square-foot building on Yucca Avenue that formerly housed a wholesale grocery store and an office furniture store.

In that first month, they gave free groceries to 1,500 people with the help of 16 volunteers. Now, with a force of 100 volunteers, the center serves 6,000 people a month.

``The purpose of Grace Resource Center is to eliminate hunger, to show the love of Christ in a tangible way by meeting (people's) physical needs,'' said Baker, 44, of Quartz Hill.

In what he describes as his ``full-time and a half'' job, Baker oversees the handout of bags of groceries three times a week Tuesdays through Thursdays, with Wednesday set aside for Spanish speakers.

The center serves hot meals in the evenings Wednesdays and Fridays and on Sunday afternoons, drawing between 100 to 400 at each seating, depending on the time of month, Baker said. The center also runs a clothing bank.

``I would love to work myself out of a job and go pastor at a church somewhere, but I don't think it will happen in my lifetime,'' Baker said.

``Although, I love what I do. The need is so great.''

About 2 percent of the center's clientele are homeless. The rest are ``mostly people who need help with a couple days of groceries. They are the near homeless and the working poor,'' Baker said.

They are single mothers and fathers, young couples working minimum-wage jobs, laid-off aerospace workers, and grandparents caring for their grandchildren on fixed incomes and unable to qualify for assistance.

Desert Christian Schools administrator and newly elected state Assemblyman George Runner has known Baker for nearly 30 years. They were schoolmates at Antelope Valley High School and worked together in the YMCA camping program.

``Steve is an incredibly gifted individual in his relationships with people,'' Runner said. ``He has a very caring heart and is able to bring and win people to his vision for caring for people.''

Bill Rorick, one of the founders of the Grace Resource Center and current board president, said Baker is a big-hearted man who has a sense of humor and is a forceful advocate for the center.

``He has a great heart for people and puts people way above himself,'' said Rorick, 68, a pastor at Westside Community Church. ``He has a tremendous way with people. That's why we have 100 volunteers.''

Rorick said Baker is a tremendous fund-raiser for the center because of his personality and dedication to his work. That's an asset in the ``rough business'' of nonprofit organizations, 97 percent of which fail after five years, and at a time of dwindling federal surplus food supplies.

``He has a heart for people, and that comes over to people as someone who cares, and they have a desire to be a part of that,'' Rorick said. ``He enraptures audiences when he speaks.''

The center has three major fund-raisers a year. The most recent was the Graceathon on local radio station KTPI-FM (103.1) two weeks ago, during which Baker spent 36 hours atop a construction lift 25 feet in the air at 15th Street West and Avenue K. The event raised $19,000 in pledges from radio listeners.

``I get through some of this by being goofy. There's a fine line sometimes between laughter and tears,'' said Baker, who does ``Jay Leno stand-ups'' to entertain people lined up at the center to pick up food.

Baker also credits his corps of volunteers, some of whom are doing court-ordered community service work but return to help after their stint is done.

``This can't happen by me alone,'' Baker said. ``It's only through a combined effort that it happens. We work as a team.''

With his father in the Navy, Baker lived all over California before moving to the Antelope Valley at age 11. After graduating from Antelope Valley High School in 1970, he went to college for a year and then joined the Navy, where from 1971 to 1975 he worked as a jet mechanic.

``I joined the Navy to see the world and saw Fresno and San Diego,'' Baker said.

While still in the Navy, Baker started to come home on the weekends and help out at the First Baptist Church in Lancaster. When he got out of the service, he worked for four years at the church as a youth counselor and head of its camping program.

Baker then worked as a youth pastor at Bear Valley Community Church in Big Bear, a pastor of First Alliance Church in San Diego, and with the homeless program with the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego.

Before being hired at Grace, Baker worked for two years at Edwards Air Force Base rebuilding T-38 jet engines for the Air Force. A picture of the airplane with signatures of co-workers hangs on the wall of his cramped office.

He took the job at Grace, realizing ``My heart was working with people. That's where my gifts were,'' said Baker, who is married with three stepchildren and has a 14-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.

With the holidays approaching, Baker and center volunteers are preparing for their annual giveaway of Thanksgiving baskets to 1,300 families.

The staggering list of food items includes 2,600 cans of cranberry sauce, 1,300 cans of yams, 6,000 pounds of onions, and 1,300 boxes of stuffing. Each basket will contain a $5 certificate toward purchase of a turkey.

There are times, Baker says, when he feels like giving up the work.

``As much as I love what I do, it's very demanding. It's dealing with literally thousands of people who are not at their worst but at difficult times in their lives,'' Baker said. ``It's a burden, but it's such a blessing. You see people walk out of here with smiles on their faces.''

The center's work can't be measured by the mere numbers it serves but by something more intangible, he said.

``Our success isn't in the thousands. The success are when people come back afterwards and say, you didn't help with just groceries, you helped us get back on our feet,'' Baker said.

Baker recalls about 1-1/2 years ago, he was working at the office after 5 p.m. when he heard banging on the door. It was a couple who once lived out of a shopping cart in the alley behind the center, making what money they could off of recyclables, Baker remembered.

They had returned to give something back to the center.

``She gave me a big hug and a check for $100. They had moved to Bakersfield, had both gotten jobs, and their house closed escrow,'' Baker said. ``They came down here and gave us a donation.''

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Photo: (color in AV only) Steve Baker has been executive director of the Grace Resource Center for five years.

Jeff Goldwater/Daily News