Donation is better than a card and flowers

It was the gift of love on Valentine’s Day for the staff and volunteers at Santa Ana’s Orange County Therapeutic Arts Center.

The arts organization, which aims to transform at-risk youth and families, received a special gift — a donation worth about $125,000 in tables, chairs, tents, bounce houses, bar counters, lights and canopies — for the nonprofit’s fundraisers.

A party rental company in Newport Beach that was going out of business called the center in early February to ask if the organization could benefit from using the equipment.

They could.

“I was jumping up and down in joy,” said Ana Jimenez-Hami, founder and executive director of the therapeutic arts center. “We were so limited, and we’d spent months looking for donations. We’re so excited.”

The special-events rentals were donated from the shuttered business, with the owners having now opened Cuttwood and Vaping Industries Wholesale and Distribution in Irvine.

Sally Crystal, who works as an executive assistant to wholesale business owner Austin Hopper, said she stumbled across a list of organizations on the city of Cerritos’ website and found the therapeutic arts center.

She then remembered it was the same organization she had donated funds to in years past. She was friends with the center’s marketing manager, Sean Chavez.

“This place has a direct impact on the community,” Crystal said. “It’s where children can have that chance to stay connected to the arts, especially in low-income areas.”

The arts center said it used to rent and borrow 75 seats for five small tables. With the donation, it now can seat 500 to 1,000 guests at 25 tables. The only expense for events will now be food costs.

The donated items will come in handy now that the group has many new people to accommodate. The 15-year-old organization, in the last five years, has doubled its number of people helped because of outreach and grants.

The center operated out of a storefront office and had a client list of 150 children. With a move to a newly equipped facility in 2005, it serves 4,000 to 5,000 children a year.

The program serves a wide age range of residents from Santa Ana and surrounding areas. Children as young as 6 months old are in Early Start day care; 4- to 18-year-olds can participate in dance, music and visual arts training after school, and parents and grandparents are in a family wellness program where they can take fitness or craft classes.

There’s also a job-training program to provide teens to 21-year-olds with tools that can help in the workforce.

It was a mission Jimenez-Hami founded to honor her philanthropic Puerto Rican parents.

“It’s very emotional for me to tell,” she said, wiping away tears from her brown eyes.

A picture of her parents was hung in her windowless office, near paintings of angels.

Her father, Freddy Jimenez, was born into poverty. He went to vocational school to learn watch and jewelry repair and eventually became a successful jewelry store owner in San Juan, where Jimenez-Hami and her siblings were born.

Once he was wealthy, Freddy’s giving nature didn’t change. His daughter remembered him taking her to the country’s poor communities to visit hospitals and rehabilitation centers. He had a special love for special-needs children, since he saw how they were mistreated.

“He inspired me,” she said. “He had a hard childhood and he didn’t give up in life. He is my hero.”

Jimenez-Hemi said her father told her two things: Be kind and generous to children, and educate yourself to the highest.

When she was a doctoral student at USC 22 years ago, she received a phone call that made her incapable of moving: Her parents, Freddy and Aida Jimenez, had been murdered.

A gang walked into the business and killed her parents, the store’s employees and customers.

“It’s sad we’re living in a world where we have these social problems,” she said. “But I always have faith in people.”

She remembered her father’s lessons and set out to change the world, she said.

Jimenez-Hami founded the center in 2000 to foster arts education and empowerment of at-risk youth and children with special needs or limited resources from Santa Ana.

“All children have special needs,” she said. “It’s about the disability, and it’s about children who are facing neglect, gangs, teen pregnancy and violence. I wanted to expand my mission to all children.”

The educational, arts and therapeutic center off Broadway, decorated with children’s drawings, was busy on a Wednesday morning. A group of mothers sat in a room during a parenting class. Their children were in a separate playroom munching on sandwiches during a break time in their Early Start class.

A food pantry recently opened within the building once the staff learned teenagers were spending their paychecks on groceries for their families. Others would fall asleep during programs since they couldn’t afford to eat.

Jimenez-Hami said she and her crew plan to use the donated equipment at summer family festivals and at their 15th anniversary celebration on Sept. 26.

And there’s one more donation that Jimenez-Hami said the office needs: a new server for computers.

“It’s lasted over 15 years,” she said. “The IT person is so nervous.”

She laughed at the thought.

“There’s divine timing in everything,” she said.

For more information about OC Therapeutic Arts Center, call (714) 547-5468 or visit occtac.org.