Slain Man’s Friends Recall His Kindness

Even when he was homeless, Charles W. Kiefer managed to buy food for those short on cash. When he had a room of his own, he loaned rent money to struggling Hollywood neighbors.

Kiefer wasn’t always paid back, but the 68-year-old part-time liquor store clerk didn’t stop giving. His generosity ended only with his life, when he was shot and killed by a robber at the cash register of Al’s Liquor and Deli two weeks ago.

Friends in the neighborhood just across Melrose Avenue from Paramount Studios were devastated by the loss of a man who had given so much.

But when they learned that Kiefer had no relatives to speak of, they found they might have a way to return some of the countless favors he’d done for them over the years.

They became his family. Neighbors and the owners of the liquor store collected money to pay his funeral expenses.

Workers at Paramount and KCAL-TV Channel 9, also across the street from the store, brought in flowers and donated to the funeral fund.

On Saturday, about 50 of them held a memorial service in a neighborhood church.

It was the least they could do, they said, for someone who was an inspirational figure despite having next to nothing.

“He set an example for all of us,” said Polly LePorte, who knew Kiefer for seven years.

LePorte said Kiefer had been sleeping on top of wooden pallets behind the liquor store when she asked him to care for a homeless mongrel dog.

Kiefer agreed but decided that the dog, whom he named Hercules, deserved better than to live in a parking lot. So Kiefer returned to working in the liquor store, a job he held on and off over the years, and got an apartment a block away.

George LePorte, Polly’s husband, said Kiefer had seemed perfectly happy to sleep behind the store. Kiefer occasionally scraped together a few dollars by collecting cans for recycling.

“He would tell us he was going ‘canning,’ talking about it like it was a sport,” LePorte said.

Neighborhood friend Marta Klein said Kiefer “fed his dogs steak and himself pasta.”

“He was so selfless, he made you want to be like him,” said Siegurd Rust, who lived with Kiefer for three years as a teenager, when Kiefer and his mother were in a relationship.

Rust, 32, said Kiefer was a father figure to him even after he had broken up with his mother.

Rust, who now lives in Studio City and has children of his own, fondly recalls Kiefer teaching him to drive in an old Volkswagen bus and offering him important encouragement in adolescence. “I don’t know what I’d be today without him,” he said.

Rust said little is known about Kiefer’s life before he came to Los Angeles about 25 years ago, after a falling out with his family in Oklahoma.

Kiefer worked briefly as a security guard at KTLA-TV Channel 5 and sold odds and ends at swap meets, Rust said.

Raed Safi, whose family owns Al’s Liquor and Deli, said Kiefer worked off and on at the store for 11 years. Safi added that Kiefer was always at the business chatting with customers whether he was working there or not.

Klein said Kiefer would patiently listen to anyone who needed a sympathetic ear. “He was a father-confessor to us all,” she said.

One reason so many helped with Kiefer’s funeral arrangements, Klein said, is that Kiefer introduced many neighborhood residents to each other.

Many area residents say they too have been victims of violent crime. But the strength of the community keeps them from moving, said George LePorte.

“The good things outweigh the bad. This is a good neighborhood because of people like Charley, who had a heart of gold,” he said.

Now that they have taken care of his memorial arrangements, Kiefer’s friends are trying to find homes for Hercules and Lady, another dog he had adopted. So far, they said, it hasn’t been easy finding someone to pick up where Charley Kiefer left off.