Getting your player ready...
LOS ANGELES — The concept of borrowing is lost on Daniella Ferrer, almost 3 years old.
“Prestado,” her grandma Maria Figueroa explains in Spanish.
“Borrowed. The toy is borrowed. You have to give it back.” But Daniella grips the popcorn push toy with all her might.
“Mine,” she whispers.
All around her, toddlers are learning the same lesson at the Toy Loan Center in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Toys, it seems, are almost nonexistent on the shopping lists of cash-strapped and unemployed parents. And the free Toy Loan Program, founded during the Great Depression, is once again seeing a surge in popularity, with a 30 percent spike in borrowers compared with 2008.
