IT'S EASY to feel alone, surrounded by stories of fabulous riches while you're trying to make the rent or put new tires on a 10-year-old car or get your kid that class ring she wants. But you aren't alone, and Ann Beyer figured that out while raising three kids on her own in Silicon Valley. People all around her at work had the same problems, the same worried looks, the same dread thinking into the future. "The perception here is that everybody has got their piece of the pie," says Beyer, "and that's not true."

A lot of people have a lot of pie. Santa Clara County's median income of $49,795 is twice the national figure. But it's the half of the households below that line that Beyer worries about. Beyer, 52, is an administrative assistant at Santa Clara University, an outfit without stock options. It's not the kind of Silicon Valley campus that makes instant millionaires. It's more like most jobs -- jobs where people try to get ahead bit by bit, pay raise by pay raise.

In recent years, people at SCU started talking about the struggle. About trying to live on a little in a land of plenty. "How do you stay in this valley?" Beyer asks. "There are some really hard decisions you have to make, and you have to make them as a family."

Many worried about providing for their children -- providing necessities and treats. They worried about housing and retirement, too, but first about their children. "You love them and you adore them and you want to give them the world," says Beyer, "and it's all you can do to just put food on the table."

Beyer's children are grown. But she remembers well saying no, when so many of her neighbors were saying yes.

So Beyer and others decided to do what they could. She landed a university grant to publish a book directing SCU workers to groups providing help with housing, food, finances, law, child care, domestic violence, child support, cheap clothes, medical problems and more.

Volunteers helped. Students were hired to do research. For some it was an eye-opener, learning people can work every day and still be poor. History student Huda Al-Marashi wasn't naive, but seeing the face of poverty brought a whole new awareness. "If you never see it," says Al-Marashi, 21, "you never know."

The book is a little thing. Only 150 copies were printed. But it is growing. Late last year, it was posted on the Web. True, those who need help aren't the most likely to have computers. But libraries have computers, and there is word of mouth. And, there is a chance that more of those struggling will know they have plenty of company and some help.

The source book Web site is

http://www.scu.edu/SCU/Projects/SourceBook/.