For example, many of the fridges would go to animal shelters to keep medicine chilled.
Officials from some of the charities seemed awed by the scale of it all. Nancy Dufford, a coordinator at Uncommon Good, a Claremont-based agency that helps low-income families, was picking out couches, fans, mirrors, school supplies and toys.
"We're thrilled," she said. "Our families will definitely benefit from this."
Seeking storage
Pomona College allows returning students to store just five boxes of items over the summer, and some schools, such as Pepperdine University and USC, don't provide any storage. As a result, some students chip in to rent off-campus storage units for the summer so they can hold on to the comforts and gizmos of home until fall.
Kuriakose, who is enrolling next year in a doctoral program in clinical psychology at UC Santa Barbara, says parents are as much to blame as anyone for "rushing out to Target to buy completely new printers and lamps every year."
Those Mom-purchased items were plentiful at Pomona's giveaway piles. But so were some oddities: a Molson beer sign, a full bottle of Celine Dion perfume, a pair of boxing gloves, a big blue plush toy horse, a gladiator costume complete with faux sword, a Weapons & Warriors Castle Combat set and a box of Hemp Plus Brownie Mix.
Then there was a woman's leathery outfit that could have been a dominatrix costume for Halloween, or maybe not. ("That was really awkward," Kuriakose said. "We decided not to put that into the church yard sale pile.")
Joint effort
Other schools are contributing in a big way, positioning bins on campus to receive discards. Students at Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount University recently donated about 11,000 pounds of clothes and shoes to Planet Aid, which sponsors development and health projects in Africa and Asia.
USC transferred large amounts to the Midnight Mission for the homeless. Next month, UCLA will be working with the Out of the Closet thrift stores that help HIV and AIDS patients, and UC Irvine will aid several organizations, including literacy programs run by Better World Books.
Recent USC graduate Erin Tsukamoto, who helped organize the collection there, said she gave away some of her bedsheets, towels and casual Southern California clothes she won't need for her upcoming school administration job in Boston.
"I have accumulated a lot over the last four years, and I consider myself a minimalist," she said.
And yet for all the things students do leave behind, it's worth noting what they don't.
At Pomona, some beer and vodka was found but no drugs, no obvious contraband, no stashes of illegally copied CDs. "I think everything illegal is pretty precious to students," Kuriakose said. "I think they are careful to pack it up."
larry.gordon@latimes.com
