Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center plays Santa for elderly and students – Daily News
Piles of gifts separated into groups lined a parking structure at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center on Thursday afternoon, Dec. 15, for the hospital’s annual Adopt a Family and Adopt a Senior program.
Hospital employees received holiday season wish lists written by low-income Reseda Charter High School students and their families, and ONEgeneration seniors. Then the employees became elves, buying gifts and donating them to the students and seniors. And each year, they hold a traditional blessing for the families and those who donated.
Sherise Davis-Wright, Reseda Charter High School special education assistant, explained the need, saying, “We have students who have hardships, well, some are homeless, some live in their cars.”
“You know, we’ve had a lot of things over the years, and so we like to make their holiday time memorable,” Davis-Wright said. “We got together with Tarzana Medical Center. … For 20-plus years we’ve been coordinating with them. Their departments get gifts for us and (we) deliver them to the students in need.”
ONEgeneration serves particularly low-income, homebound, and medically frail elderly in the West San Fernando Valley. The gifts for students and their families include scooters, skateboards, games, dolls and clothing. But for the seniors, it’s items they can find hard to afford, including toilet paper, slippers, socks and other basic necessities.
Hospital chaplains Mark Tomidy and Kelly Biggler blessed the gifts before they were loaded into vehicles and taken for delivery.
Shawn Kiley, Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center’s chief mission integration officer, said the program fills a need. “It’s incredible,” Kiley said. “This is hitting in the season where it’s darkest, you know, wintertime, and here we’re bringing hope, light and love to families and seniors that are really underserved, that need it.”
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