Volunteers Give Local Agencies a Fall Cleaning : Charity: More than 1,400 grab hammers, brooms and paintbrushes to spruce up health and human services centers.

NORTH HOLLYWOOD — Since opening in July in a modest house, the Family Visitation Center has had an ugly little secret: its play area.

The infants and toddlers who come to the center to spend time with their biological parents had to make do with a rotted sandbox and a dilapidated playhouse.

Director Tara Garrett, one of only three part-time staff members, couldn’t spare anyone to make repairs.

Saturday she got the repairs she needed, and flowers too.

The Visitation Center was one of 47 health and human services agencies that received a helping hand from more than 1,400 volunteers who swept across the Valley with brooms, hammers, paintbrushes and, in some cases, gladiolus bulbs and impatiens.

The phalanx of volunteers came from 53 Valley companies as part of United Way’s annual Community Care Day.

Despite the distractions of the January earthquake, more than 1,400 volunteers showed up, an increase of 300 from last year, said Barbara Bickel, spokeswoman for United Way’s North Angeles region.

The annual workfest, which began in the Valley four years ago, has become the model for Community Care Days being held this month in all six regions of the Greater United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

Saturday’s event began with a 7:45 a.m. breakfast kickoff rally at the Los Angeles Times Valley Edition in Chatsworth.

From there, volunteers dispersed to 54 project sites where they worked from 9 a.m. to noon, collectively putting in 4,000 hours of labor.

Their tasks ranged from cleanup and minor repairs to the repair of a fence damaged in the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake.

“It’s really good because the donors get to see where their money goes,” said Dina Warren, a United Way media representative who was helping out with a group of Sunkist volunteers at the Family Visitation Center. At the same time, Warren said, “the corporation gets to see why their money is needed.”

Indeed, the existence of a center where parents can maintain supervised contact with children who have been removed from their care was a surprise to volunteer Linda Shepler, manager of consumer response for North Hollywood-based Sunkist.

“We’re just down the street, and we didn’t even know this place was here,” said Shepler as she stenciled red and yellow tulips onto the fresh blue paint of the playhouse.

A few miles away at the Telfair Health Center, run by the Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. at Pacoima’s Telfair Elementary School, a team of 20 volunteers from Great Western Bank wound up their three-hour assignment with hamburgers donated by McDonald’s.

They had prepped the center for its open house this Friday by wallpapering the reception room, washing down the walls and floors and planting shrubbery.

Their team leader, Great Western business analyst Kiersten Obuch, epitomized the volunteer spirit.

A year ago, Obuch came out for Community Care Day after reading a solicitation for volunteers in the employee newsletter.

She was embarrassed to find only two other employees of the Chatsworth-based bank had showed up.

Obuch took on this year’s recruitment as a personal mission.

“Help Your Community and Have Some Fun!” she wrote in a staff bulletin she distributed to every Great Western employee.

It worked. Responses flowed in. Becoming the unofficial coordinator, Obuch worked out assignments for 125 bank volunteers who worked Saturday and more who signed up for United Way projects in other areas.

Then her alarm woke her while it was still dark Saturday morning, and Obuch wondered if she really had the right stuff.

Recently married, she has her own new house to care for.

“I had my own painting and my own cleaning to do,” she said.

But she knew how to cast out the doubts.

“I just thought, ‘Everybody had to give a little bit, so that’s not a good excuse,’ ” she said.

She put on her work clothes and helped her community.