An annual giving tradition carried on by local Vikings

Andrew Edwards

These Vikings didn’t come to pillage; they came to give.

Aided by a horde of about 300 volunteers, the Noble Viking

Charities of Orange County met Sunday to pack hundreds of boxes full

of food for needy families in the county.

Since 1995, the Newport Beach-based charity has gotten together on

the Sunday before Christmas to load up hundreds of boxes of donated

food.

This year, the main course was canned ham.

Volunteers carrying boxes lined up at a long table in a parking

structure underneath the Ritz Restaurant near Fashion Island.

Like a human assembly line, the Vikings and their helpers started

out with the ham and hurried along the table, as volunteers on the

other side stuffed the boxes full of other goods including oranges,

coffee, potatoes and cheese.

When the boxes were full, it was time to grab another box from a

huge pile and start over.

“Just get the next one; just get back in line,” Viking Lee Gjolme,

said between fill-ups. “That’s the mission.”

The garage was already busy at 8 a.m. Sunday, and nearly two hours

later, almost 1,200 boxes had been packed. Gus Najera, 18, of Santa

Ana, carried the final box.

Najera, a volunteer associated with the Boys and Girls Club of

Santa Ana, came to “help our community, families that can barely get

support,” he said.

Najera was one of many volunteers helping out, a sight that

encouraged the Vikings’ incoming chief, Mike Farah.

“Having all these young kids as volunteers, they become givers,

not receivers,” said Farah, a Newport Beach resident. “It’s a great

lesson in life.”

Costa Mesa’s Share Our Selves, a charity that provides food,

clothing and medical care to the needy, was one of the groups that

received a share of the food packages.

John McGlinn, whose wife Karen is the charity’s executive

director, rounded up the men in his family to stack boxes into two

pickup trucks and a van.

“This food is going to help us take care of servicing 180

families,” said McGlinn, a Costa Mesa resident.

Members of Noble Viking Charities don’t need Scandinavian heritage

to join -- Farah is of Lebanese descent.

Most of the group’s members are Orange County businessmen, and the

only requirement to join is a $250 donation, though the initiation

includes a bit of Nordic theater.

“When we initiate a new member, we make them put on a Viking

helmet,” Farah said. “The chief has an ax. They have to kiss the ax.”

Since 1995, the Vikings have filled up their food baskets at The

Ritz, founded by the late Hans Prager, who was a member of the group.

His wife, Charlene Prager, 56, observed that while the persistence

of the food-basket tradition is “marvelous,” the group’s increasing

food donations show that the problems of the needy have not gone

away.

“We probably live in one of the most affluent counties in

California, and going from 250 to 1,200 boxes is kind of a sad

statement,” she said.