ST. LOUIS -- Gayle Johnson knows people who desperately need assistance. Peggy Fagen and her co-workers want to help.

What connects them is the 100 Neediest Cases campaign, commencing again to help struggling people and families during the holiday season. Sunday's Post-Dispatch will begin the annual publication of brief profiles on each of this year's 100 Neediest Cases.

But those stories describe just some of the most compelling cases. The annual charity has gathered 14,000 cases from 80 participating local social service agencies. The goal is to find help for all of them.

That number is about 1,000 higher than last year, a reflection of the stubborn and widespread recession.

Johnson is office administrator at Humanitri, at 1120 South Sixth Street, which provides transitional housing for formerly homeless people and families. Johnson and her staff send information on potential cases to the United Way of Greater St. Louis, which coordinates the program.

Fagen is director of book production at Elsevier in Maryland Heights, a publisher of health books, journals and Web information. Elsevier's 700 employees and contractors hold bake sales and other events throughout the year to raise money and buy items for the cases they adopt through the United Way. Last year, they collected $11,926 in cash and goods, including a new washing machine and a kitchen table set, for their 24 cases.

"We want to reach out to those who aren't lucky enough to have jobs and who need some help," said Fagen, who coordinates all of Elsevier's company-sponsored charities. The company sponsorship is in its third year, but workers at Elsevier have been participating in the Neediest Cases for about 15 years.

Humanitri was formed in 2006 by merging the Good Samaritan Center, the Lutheran Ministry Association and Friends of Moms. The new agency owns 35 homes and apartments in St. Louis and St. Louis County and provides temporary housing and other assistance to families in hardship.

Johnson said the agency proposed 105 people or households for this year's Neediest Cases. She described three of those cases:

— A widower with five children who has a low-paying job and needs help with utility bills.

— A single mother of three who has multiple health problems and wants her children to get Christmas gifts.

— A woman who was laid off from a factory job and lost her son to muscular dystrophy. She couldn't afford the funeral, but the funeral home agreed to let her pay through installments.

The last woman, Robin Dunlap, said it would take time for her finances to turn around.

The Post-Dispatch typically doesn't identify the names of people profiled as 100 Neediest Cases. But Dunlap, of Bellefontaine Neighbors, agreed to share her story.

She recently landed a part-time job, but she's still behind on rent and utilities. The 100 Neediest Cases, she said, is offering help for her and her family at just the right time.

"I really appreciated the United Way coming through for us, because we are going to still need some help," she said.

Johnson said the economy was making it hard for people her agency served to stay on their feet long-term.

"This time, we are seeing more people who successfully went through our program and became stabilized, but are back because they have lost their jobs," she said.

Vanessa Wayne, director of 100 Neediest Cases for the United Way, said that was a common tale in this year's increase in cases, up to 14,000 from 13,000 last year.

"People who were teetering on the edge have fallen off the cliff," Wayne said. "Others had homes and jobs and all of a sudden were laid off. Their home is in foreclosure. They need help and don't know how to find it."

The campaign asks area residents to "adopt" cases, then raise money or provide gifts to help meet the needy families' requests. For the first time, Wayne said, all of the 100 cases profiled by the Post-Dispatch last year were adopted.

But the scope of the campaign is much wider than the 100 cases that appear in the newspaper.

The United Way arranges for roughly 75 participating companies and organizations to adopt hundreds of other cases that are not featured in the paper. Those donors range from such big payrolls as Monsanto Co. and Washington University to the Mitchell James Salon in Richmond Heights, which sells Christmas ornaments and donates the proceeds.

Last year, participating groups adopted 1,200 cases, or 10 percent, a percentage that Wayne called the norm.

But beyond that, the campaign also raised $1.6 million in cash contributions last year for all of the cases submitted to the campaign. Cash donations that are received this year will go to each of 14,000 cases, including those that are not adopted.

The charity traces its origins to 1922, when a group called the Social Planning Council raised about $400 through its Christmas Bureau charity. The old St. Louis Star-Times publicized the program from the 1930s until that newspaper closed in 1951, when the Post-Dispatch became co-sponsor and renamed the charity the Christmas Fund. It raised $12,000 that year.

In 1954, the newspaper used the phrase "100 Neediest Cases" in a headline, and the name stuck. Since then, the Post-Dispatch has published brief profiles of the 100 most compelling cases each year in the weeks leading to Christmas.

And it does so again beginning Sunday.



Laurie Skrivan of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.