ActionScript 2.0 :: Store A Generated Name Of An MC As A Variable?

Code:
for (var i:Number = 0; i<numOfItems; i++) {
var t:MovieClip = "item"+i;
t.onRelease = activator;
}

This returns an error saying that there is a type mismatch because "item"+i is a string. It is a string, but it's also the instance name of an MC on the stage.

Let's say I have 30 MC's on the stage named item1, item2, item3, etc. Instead of assigning an onRelease statement to each of these manually I thought I could just run them through a for loop. They are not dynamic clips though, not at this point anyway.