CARLSBAD - The middle-age woman pulled her coat tightly over her pajamas as she knocked lightly on the door of the Boys & Girls Clubs' gymnasium Friday morning.

When the door opened, she told the staff of the Carlsbad Christmas Bureau Adopt-a-Family program that she had received a call informing her to show up that morning to pick up her family's free holiday basket.

"You bettered have a lot of room," said bureau volunteer Don Metcalf.

Then, he and fellow volunteer Gary Duerst rolled out two carts containing a half dozen plastic boxes stuffed with gifts and food.

The woman looked at them in disbelief.

"Do you want me to bring these back," she said, indicating the plastic bins.

Nope, they told her - the boxes, along with all the items inside, were hers to keep. After she wished them a cheery "God Bless" and drove away, Metcalf gave a small satisfied smile. The woman was a single mom with two teenage boys, one of whom is mentally disabled, he said.

Her family was one of the first of some 400 families that the Carlsbad Christmas Bureau will help this year. Most people will pick up their baskets today in a system that's been perfected over the years into something of almost military precision, Metcalf said.

The streets around the Boys & Girls Clubs will be closed to regular traffic today to allow the families to get their baskets. The bureau's volunteer warehouse crew, its edge-of-the-building crew and its curbside crew will transfer the prepacked boxes to the waiting vehicles, he said.

Begun in 1970, the program allows schoolchildren, businesspeople and civic volunteers to adopt families over the holidays, bureau President Phil Urbina said.

Years ago, they collected toy and food donations and put together the boxes themselves, but these days the donors are given the first names and ages of a family group and told to put together boxes themselves. That makes it easier for the bureau and it also means the donors can target their gift giving, Urbina said.

On Friday morning, boxes filled with skateboards, Disney princess toys and board games stood lined up in neat rows awaiting families. Metcalf, a retired Carlsbad police officer, eyed one box that contained a police investigator's crime kit based on the "CSI" TV shows.

"Here's a gift I want," he said, laughing.

Gifts for adults and teenagers are the hardest things to come by, Urbina said.

"Everybody wants the little kids because it makes them feel better (to give to them)," he said.

However, the bureau's list of adoptable families also includes needy senior citizens, so gifts for older adults are eagerly sought, Metcalf said.

The qualifications to be adopted as a needy family are simple - "They must be Carlsbad residents and they must show proof of residency," Urbina said.

They don't have to provide details about their financial condition.

Carlsbad Unified School District adopts the most families each year - typically a school will take a dozen or so families, so each classroom can have one, Urbina said. Also on the top adoptee list are the Booz Allen Hamilton technology consulting company, which took 20 families this year; TaylorMade-Adidas Golf, which took 25; and Wells Fargo, which took 16.

The neatest thing about the program is how it brings so many different people in the community together, Metcalf and Urbina said.

In addition to dozens of volunteers from Carlsbad's Hi-Noon Rotary and Carlsbad Christian Assembly, people from the Girl Scouts to the Chamber of Commerce contribute time and money, they said.

"Virtually every facet of the community … is involved," Metcalf said. "I can't think of any groups that are left out. … We brighten Christmas for a lot of people, a lot of kids."

Contact staff writer Barbara Henry at (760) 901-4072 or bhenry@nctimes.com.