FOSTER-CARE KIDS AGAIN NEED SUITCASES.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Odds and ends from around the Valley.

The kid made a big impact in this Valley a couple of years ago with his program Suitcases With A Heart, even though he did think the name his mom thought up was a little corny.

But it fit, Gavin Bryan had to admit. Perfectly.

These would be suitcases with a heart. Suitcases for foster-care kids moving in and out of temporary homes, their meager possessions usually thrown in plastic trash bags.

That's what the little boy brought with him in early 1998, when he stayed with the Bryan family in Sylmar for a few weeks. The child had showed up one night during an El Nino storm with a county social worker, carrying donated clothes in a trash bag.

``Trash bags are for trash, not kids,'' 15-year-old Gavin said to his mother, Debbie. ``It isn't right.''

No, it wasn't right, she agreed. It sent exactly the wrong message to this emotionally vulnerable little boy without a permanent home - that he was expendable, like trash.

The next day the honors student at James Monroe High's Police Academy Magnet School went shopping with his mom at a local thrift store for a suitcase.

Gavin vowed that when the little boy showed up at his next home, he wouldn't be holding a flimsy trash bag. He would have his own suitcase.

``From there, the idea just grew and caught on,'' Debbie Bryan said Thursday. ``Gavin knew there had to be hundreds of old suitcases in the back of people's closets that they didn't need anymore.

``He wanted to collect them all and give them to the foster-care kids,'' she said.

And that's exactly what Gavin did. He turned over more than 1,500 used suitcases to the Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services, donated by people who had read my column on Gavin.

``We had so many suitcases we didn't know where to put them all until the county came to pick them up for the kids,'' said former Los Angeles Unified School District board member Roberta Weintraub, founder and executive director of the city's Police Academy Magnet Schools.

But now the well is dry again, says Deborah Cotton, resource coordinator for the Department of Children's Services' adoption section.

``The last suitcases we got are long gone, and we need more for the kids coming in now,'' Cotton said Thursday.

So, Gavin Bryan's asking again for your old suitcases. The kid's almost 18 now and in his last year of school at Monroe High.

``I'm hoping before I graduate that we can collect even more than the 1,500 we collected over the last few years,'' he said.

Anyone with old suitcases they want to give to foster-care kids can drop them off at the main administrative office at Monroe High School, 9229 Haskell Ave., North Hills.

For more information, call Andrea at [phone].

Ruth and Steve Greenbaum of Woodland Hills should be having an interesting Thanksgiving. They've invited their whole family over to watch them open a time capsule they sealed more than 33 years ago right after their wedding.

The hook is, Ruth swears she and Steve can't remember what they put in the capsule except for a package of Dentyne gum, the brand Steve always chewed, and a bottle of ketchup.

``I think we wanted to see if the labeling would change over time, because other than that, I can't imagine why we would put those things in,'' Ruth said Thursday. ``But, I swear, that's all we can remember.''

Actually, the time capsule's not even a capsule. It's a 33-gallon barrel that contained a complete set of china Ruth's mother-in-law gave the young couple.

``It was such a beautiful barrel that we decided, hey, let's make it a time capsule,'' she said. ``It's been in the garage. I put my laundry baskets on it.''

The Greenbaums were going to open it for the new millennium, but everyone in the family had different places to go, so they decided to wait until a holiday they would spend together.

``I know it sounds awkward that we don't know what's in there, but it's true,'' Ruth says. ``We're just hoping we didn't put in anything too embarrassing.''

You never know. They were newlyweds back in 1967.

And, finally, the Valley's most famous globe-trotting fencer, 17-year- old Derek Snyder of Chatsworth, just left for the International Fencing Open in London, after winning the Division 1-A Men's Foil national championship this year.

A protege of the Rev. Lawrence Calhoun, the fencing priest of Chaminade High, Derek will be fencing for Stanford next fall, then hopes to compete in the 2004 Olympic Games.

His is one of those stories parents love to hear. A smart, talented kid without any real athletic focus until his dad makes a suggestion one day when the kid's 14.

``I told him you like Zorro and the Three Musketeers, why don't you give fencing a try?'' laughs Derek's dad, Don Snyder.

The next thing you know your son's winning national and international championships, is headed for Stanford and has a legitimate shot at making the U.S. Olympic fencing team.

Not bad.