FREMONT — Angela DeRush has four children, a disabled mother, no job and no car. In mass transit-deprived Fremont, that equals tough times.

"Things just seem like they're going down, down, down," DeRush said outside her parents' three-bedroom house in which she and her children have been living for the past year.

"You don't think it can get any worse, and then it does."

Her children's Christmas presents, like their Thanksgiving meal, will come courtesy of the Tri-City Volunteers, a Fremont-based nonprofit that helps people in need.

It seems like a lifetime ago, but DeRush, an only child, used to get everything she wanted for Christmas.

"My aunts and uncles said I was spoiled," she said.

But the family's luck started to turn more than 20 years ago when her father was involved in a major traffic accident.

The crash left him with major injuries and totaled the truck he used for work, DeRush said.

The family ended up having to sell their Irvington district home and began to rent a nearby house.

Meanwhile, in recent years, DeRush's relationship with her children's father soured and her mother's diabetes progressed to the point where doctors had to amputate a leg.

Her dad, who works part time as a truck driver, does the best he can, DeRush said, but she and her eldest daughter must care for her mother, who recently suffered a severe stroke.

DeRush, who sleeps in the same room as her son,

awakes at 7:15 a.m. every morning and gets her youngest kids to school before the real work begins: feeding and bathing her mother, administering insulin shots and testing her blood.

"There's no time for yourself, ever," said DeRush, who is a young-looking 38. She has fleshy cheeks, shoulder-length brown hair and a stout nose.

"I need to do something," she said. "I've got to work something out, even if it's a part-time job."

Tri-City Volunteers provide the only outside help DeRush gets. She last worked as a temp at Fremont's NUMMI auto plant, but her unemployment benefits have expired, and she hasn't applied for welfare or food stamps.

During the year, she, or a friend with a car, go to the charity's headquarters to pick up canned food. At Christmastime, she gets a gift basket and toys for the kids. Two years ago, the group provided stockings full of goodies; last year it gave an MP3 player and stuffed animals.

Tri-City Volunteers, founded in 1970, is a volunteer group with nine employees who help distribute food, clothing and household items to needy families in Fremont, Newark and Union City.