Wearing their khaki shirts, army-green shorts, multihued badges and flashing pins, these young Scouts between the ages of 11 and 18 meticulously planned and prepared to make holiday wishes come true for a family that does not always top the needy list. Every year, for almost a decade now, Troop 407 has been working with "Friends Outside," a program that helps families with at least one of their members either currently in prison or recently released from prison.

"Children do not choose their parents, and if one of the family members is or has been incarcerated, many [of their children] won't have a Christmas at all until someone helps them," explains Jennifer Tait, executive director of Friends Outside.

Donors who adopt a family at Christmas normally leave food and essentials for them at a designated warehouse. The next day the family comes to pick up the donations. "This is to provide anonymity to the families. Not everybody is comfortable receiving charity, and not everybody is comfortable giving in such situations," says Tait.

But the Christmas program gets more personal than that with the Scouts. They actually meet the family.

A few days before Christmas, five or six members of the troop take a decorated tree and refreshments for all the members of the family they have adopted that year.

"Santa comes along with us bearing all the gifts. As we get closer to the apartment, we start singing Christmas carols and then we knock on the door," says Richard Kurasaki, webmaster for the troop, who visited the adopted family last year. Kurasaki is a sophomore at Cupertino High School and has been with this troop for four years.

The little group of Scouts, parents and Santa stand outside the family's door belting a festive classic such as "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

"It is amazing to watch the faces of these children light up as they receive their gifts from Santa," says Kurasaki. "That's when I realized how fortunate I am. People living in poverty do not enjoy the holidays like a lot of us do," he adds.

And that's just the sentiment that the troop's scoutmaster, Larry Grace, has been trying to instill in his boys. Grace is a Scout veteran and has been 407's scoutmaster for 20 years and counting. "One of the things we teach and encourage our Scouts to do is a 'good turn.' It is one thing to blindly contribute things to people, but it assumes a whole lot more meaning if the boys can see where it goes and make a connection with the people."

Friends Outside's Tait recalls Grace approaching her years ago with the plan to have an "open" Christmas with the families. "We asked him what his motives were, and we found that he was somebody who could handle the meeting with the family with great tact and would make it comfortable for everybody."

"As far as we are concerned the family we support during Christmas is one that needs our help. It's just coincidental that one of its members is incarcerated," says Grace. "We tell our boys about the situation as a matter of fact—that when a family member is in prison it puts the burden of hardship on the family and that we would be helping them out this Christmas. We don't get involved in whys, wheres or how longs."

Grace, a Saratoga resident and an electronic aerospace engineer, comes from a family of Scouts. His father before him was a scoutmaster, too, and his three sons were Boy Scouts, one of whom went on to earn the highest honor among Scouts—the Eagle. Ever since he took over as the scoutmaster in 1982, Grace has attended almost every single Monday night meeting.

Friends Outside normally recommends a family with three to four children. In the troop there are five groups, each led by a patrol. "Each group is responsible for one member of the family. They pool the money and go out with one of the parents to buy gifts for that member," says Carol Hellie, troop committee chairwoman.

Hellie's son was a Boy Scout with 407 till he moved on to college. Hellie, a Sunnyvale native, continues to be an active supporter of the troop. "The parents are all very involved. But at the same time we make sure the boys handle everything themselves," she says.

David Joiner, 16, a junior at Cupertino High, was responsible for getting the Christmas tree last year. "I went up to this place where they were selling Christmas trees and told them that I needed one for this family. So they asked me to work for them for some time. I worked there for a couple of hours helping people and loading trees onto their cars and trucks. After that I could take the tree. It felt great. But once I met this family, I realized how much I had taken for granted. As we gave away the gifts, the kids looked up at us with awe," he says.

David Schrey served as a patrol leader for the group that was responsible for all the tree decorations this year. Schrey, who attends seventh grade at Miller Middle School, says, "We were making these paper balls with glue and clips. I felt very sorry for this family. So I wanted to do a good job on the tree." As an added perk, Schrey was the leader of the group that had high school students in it. "They would get mad at me when I bossed them around." He grins and says, "Sometimes I did."

Even before the troop began its Christmas tradition with Friends Outside, it had a caroling tradition that is more than a quarter of a century old. It was started by scoutmaster Ted Brown when his mother was admitted to a home for the elderly. "It was an old-fashioned, not-for-profit home for the elderly, and Brown wanted Christmas caroling as a special treat for her. So all the boys would go there and sing songs for her," says Carol Hellie. But after she died, the troop continued the practice at the Odd Fellows home, another nursing home for the elderly in Saratoga.

"Fortunately all the boys in our troop enjoy good health. So they don't have an idea of what it is to get old. But once they meet these elderly people—sing carols, shake hands and give a few hugs and spread some Christmas cheer—then the whole experience becomes more meaningful," says Grace.

So every year after caroling, the boys have a little party of their own at the church and then just a few volunteers set off with the parents and their scoutmaster to create some Christmas magic for the family they've adopted.

This year, the troop chose Irma Chavarria and her family, who can use any miracle that comes their way. Chavarria is a stay-at-home mom with four children. Three of them narrowly escaped death this year. In March, her 2¹/2-year-old son was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, a rare blood disorder that kills one out of two victims. Days later, her eldest daughter was involved in a car crash that killed two other passengers, and just weeks ago her third daughter was diagnosed with a kidney disease. "It's been a very stressful year and I'm very grateful that [the Scouts] have chosen our family. It's a blessing," she says.

Grace says the primary goal of the Scout movement is to create good citizens and responsible leaders. He says the "outing in Scouting" and the community work the boys do are just tools toward the goal. "It's a real reward for me to watch these boys grow up into young, worthy men. Moreover, it helps me feel young," he adds.

The Scouts visited their family this year on Dec. 22, after the Courier's deadline.