Santa Lifts Spirits of the Down and Out

Those probably were not visions of sugarplums dancing through the head of the man I spied dozing on a bench in Santa Monica’s Palisades Park.

I leaned over him and offered my heartiest Ho! Ho! Ho! He awoke with a start and instinctively started throwing haymakers. Fortunately, he missed.

“Oh, it’s Santa,” the man said when he got a clear look at me. “Sorry. I didn’t know who it was.”

Clad in my white beard and baggy red suit and pushing a shopping cart loaded with bags, I may have looked like one of the park’s down-and-out inhabitants. Except that the 150 bags piled into my cart were filled with toothbrushes, toothpaste, candy, apples, peanuts, instant noodle soup and colorful bandannas.

Employees of a Santa Monica educational consulting firm had filled the decorated bags Friday and hired me to take a noontime stroll through the oceanfront park to give them away as a gesture of holiday goodwill.

No one was certain how St. Nick would be received as he pushed his cart among the bedrolls and makeshift shelters erected by the homeless who live in the park.

“We’ve never done anything like this before,” said Marlene Canter, vice president of Lee Canter & Associates.

Neither had the rent-a-Santa company I’m working for this month. His St. Nicks are normally assigned to shopping malls, department stores and private parties, said John McGill III, Santa supervisor for Western Temporary Services.

“I’ll walk behind you and watch out for your backside,” McGill promised.

As it turned out, no Santa has ever been more graciously received in any home.

“God bless you!” said Tom Price, an unemployed Texan who was sitting forlornly on a bench when I shook his hand.

Ron Wilcox embraced me when he peeked into his bag and spied the toothbrush.

“Merry Christmas to you!” exclaimed Herbert Oliver, 62, who was sporting a real white beard that rivaled mine.

Near Santa Monica Pier, homeless men and women rushed toward me when they caught a glimpse of my red suit.

“Thank you, thank you,” said Deborah Velasquez, an Illinois resident who has lived in the park for two months with her husband, Antonio, while they look for work.

A man painting a beach scene on four-foot strips of plastic insisted that I take a set of his oil paintings in exchange for the bag I handed him. “They show the different seasons I’ve seen from here,” said the artist--whose work was signed “Cesar.”

As I pushed my cart from the pier northward toward California Avenue, a few of those I stopped to greet turned down the gift bags.

“There are people who need it more than me,” one woman said. Maria Latos, 79, of Hollywood also declined a bag. But as I turned to leave, she grabbed my hand and kissed it.

Canter & Associates workers Lynn Robinson, John Tiffany and Barry Underwood refilled my shopping cart several times as I walked along Wilshire Boulevard toward Lincoln Park, where I ended my visit.

Along the way, motorists honked and waved and some stopped in traffic lanes so children in their cars could greet Santa.

Back at their office, Santa’s helpers showed Cesar’s artwork to admiring co-workers. Office personnel manager Mary Ann Vollrath decided to auction them off to employees and use the proceeds to help fill more gift bags.