It's 10 a.m. on a Friday and one of Charlotte's more unusual charity traditions is unfolding like a comedy skit at the Target off Kings Drive near uptown.

Two shoppers - both members of the Salvation Army Women's Auxiliary - are grabbing fistfuls of 70-cent children's gloves and flinging them over their shoulders into a cart.

Scoop, toss ... scoop, toss ... scoop, toss.

When the cart starts to overflow, Sally Weiss and Sharon Webb grab another. When it fills, they get another...then another, and so on.

Other shoppers pause at the frenzy, see Weiss sitting with her legs crossed on the floor, and quietly turn their carts around and head to another aisle.

"They're 30 percent off!" explains Weiss, giddy with excitement. "We're going to buy everything!"

Three hours, five shopping carts and $1,600 later, they exit the store with 2,205 pairs of children's multicolored knit gloves and 234 pink and green knit hats.

Welcome to the world of extreme bargain shopping for the needy, a unique and at times offbeat mission assigned to a special team within the Salvation Army Women's Auxiliary.

The team targets store clearances and closeout sales throughout the year, where stocking stuffers can be bought in bulk for the Salvation Army's Christmas Bureau, an annual event that provides gifts for thousands of poor children.

The auxiliary predicts it could need as many as 13,000 Christmas stockings this year, because of rising poverty and homelessness.

That means Weiss, Webb and the rest of the Stocking Committee will wreak havoc on clearance sales the rest of the year.

"It's therapeutic," says Webb, laughing, "for both me and my husband."

Bargains galore

Earlier this month, the Stocking Committee hit eight Targets in one week and bought 5,600 pairs of children's gloves and 600 knit hats.

Weiss, a retired designer, did most of the buying.

She chairs the committee and is its longest-serving member (five years). She's also reputed to be its most aggressive shopper, spending entire days going from one interstate exit to the next, looking for bargains.

Her record: five hours in one store. On another occasion, she visited five stores in one day. Her longest period in the checkout line was three exhausting hours.

On the upside, stores usually open a register just for her, and managers are often willing to drop prices when they see she intends to buy the entire stock of an item.

If they don't offer, she asks.

"Sally can find something marked 90 percent off and she'll still ask for another discount," marvels Webb, co-chair of the Stocking Committee.

Adds member Mildred Sturdivant: "She does not take 'no' for an answer. She's got guts, I'll give her that."

Example: Weiss decided Tuesday to return 400 pairs of those children's gloves, because she found them 30 cents cheaper at another Target.

It wouldn't be the first time she's done that.

Shoppers needed

It was about 20 years ago that the women's auxiliary launched a Christmas Bureau stocking program, and it consisted the first year of 500 socks stuffed with "junk and fast-food toys."

Last year, 11,757 were given out by the auxiliary, and they brimmed with school supplies, toys, toothbrushes, rubber ducks, flashlights, gloves and winter hats.

The auxiliary admits the numbers are overwhelming its 80-plus members, who are largely retirees.

Salvation Army officials have eased the pressure with a program that encourages churches, companies and Scouts to provide stuffed stockings. It resulted in more than 6,000 being donated last year, says Capt. Bethany Hawks of the Salvation Army.

But that still leaves the auxiliary responsible for thousands of stockings.

Money is tight, too, with a stocking budget of $13,000 that the auxiliary raises through events and sales of handmade ornaments. Hawks would like to see more of that money go to other auxiliary programs, like scholarships for at-risk students.

"I would hope the public would step up and offer to do at least half the stockings, if not more," Hawks says. "We need financial assistance, as well as manpower, to physically stuff the stockings. People can help in a lot of ways."

An example presented itself days before Christmas, when the auxiliary ran short of stocking stuffers for toddlers.

Weiss made a public plea for rubber ducks and within two days, 1,600 were delivered by average people anxious to help.

Volunteers also stepped up to pass out the stockings to parents, including one mysterious guy who kept the hood up on his sweatshirt up the entire time.

Turned out to be Steve Smith from the Carolina Panthers.

Not a single parent recognized him.

"This town boggles the mind," says Betty Maxwell, who helped launch the stocking program. "For all its grown-up sophistication, it has stayed a place where people will help you, if you just give them a valid reason.

"And they will do quadruple what you asked."

Tears, gratitude

Two of the five women on the Stocking Committee grew up in homes that didn't have Christmas stockings.

Mildred Sturdivant, raised in Wadesboro, got shoeboxes filled with candy and nuts.

And Marilyn Jordan, raised in Queens, N.Y., says the matter of stuffing anything with toys simply never came up in her home. "When I came to Charlotte 20 years ago, it was the first time I'd heard of it. I had no idea."

She has since learned that the tradition can bring tears to the eyes of the parents at the Christmas Bureau, either out of gratitude or for some recollection of Christmases past.

Most people associate the Christmas Bureau with big bags of gifts and bikes, but the auxiliary likes to think it's the little things found in stockings that kids take to bed with them on Christmas night.

Webb senses the public might agree.

During her glove-buying frenzy at the midtown Target, a shopper named Susan Utsey couldn't resist asking: Why all the carts? Why all the gloves?

Webb explained their mission to help poor children, and Utsey was moved.

Later, as Webb and Weiss were checking out, Utsey approached them again, and this time pressed a wad of bills into Webb's hand.

"Thank you for doing this," Utsey said. "I think it's wonderful."