RESIDENTS RALLY TO HELP KIDS WHOSE DREAMS WERE STOLEN.

Byline: Daily News

The kids in Catherine Macias' third-grade class at Canterbury Elementary School learned another lesson Thursday.

These kids from Arleta and Pacoima learned that a heck of a lot of people in the San Fernando Valley care about them.

After Dennis McCarthy's column appeared in Thursday's editions detailing how thieves had broken into their classroom and stolen cases of candy earmarked for sale as a fund-raiser for a rare field trip to a science fair, the school received a flood of calls from people wanting to help out.

One of them was from best-selling psychological thriller author Jonathan Kellerman, who offered to underwrite the entire $4,000 trip. The 25 kids had planned to sell the candy door to door to make money to pay for an overnight stay at the Sea World Science Adventure Program in San Diego.

``It stinks what those thieves did to these kids, and like everybody else, I wanted to help,'' Kellerman said. ``I have a charitable foundation set up just for cases like this.''

For high-test-scoring kids in the school's magnet programs, trips like these are common. For kids in general-education classes, like Macias', they are rare. None of her students had ever had the opportunity for a field trip like this before, and the theft of the candy was hitting them hard.

Santa Calderon, principal at Canterbury, said she was astounded by the number of telephone calls the school had received from people wanting to donate money to replace the cases of stolen candy.

``Our phone was ringing off the hook all day,'' she said, adding that there would be a meeting soon to determine what to do with the donated money that exceeds the cost of sending Macias' 25 kids to the science fair.

``Right now, I'd say we'll probably be sending more kids who could never afford to pay for a field trip like this,'' Calderon said.

Canterbury School is at 13670 Montague St., Arleta, 91331. The phone number is [phone].