Skid row’s Christmas cheer is on the money

The line for the free money began to form about 7 a.m. Christmas morning. Homeless veterans, drug addicts, pregnant women with children, and people in wheelchairs took numbered tickets and waited patiently on the sidewalk on skid row.

At 8:30 a.m., when a man showed up nearby and started tossing wads of dollar bills into the air, police stepped in to check him out -- but he wasn’t the famous “Father Dollar Bill” they all were waiting for, just a wannabe with far fewer bucks to throw around.

“Father Dollar Bill” is the Rev. Maurice Chase -- and every Christmas for the last 24 years, he has arrived on skid row carrying thousands of dollars in cash.

At 9 a.m. Tuesday, when he showed up at East 5th Street and Towne Avenue with $15,000, people in wheelchairs immediately surrounded him. His tradition is to give the first 10 people in wheelchairs $100. Others in line receive varying amounts, perhaps $20 or, more often, a few bucks.

Chase says he solicits the money from Los Angeles celebrities -- the families of Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope, billionaire Eli Broad. Most Sundays, he’s on skid row too, distributing smaller amounts, usually about $5,000 to $6,000.

People in line often tell him how they’ll spend it -- on hamburgers, ice cream and other treats they can’t get at the shelters. He knows they’re as likely to spend it on booze and drugs. But he says he doesn’t care. That’s not the point. The point is to show them that they are not forgotten.

The first $100 bill he pulled from his black leather wallet went to an older man with a scraggly gray beard, worn watch cap and sweat shirt.

“Thank you, father. Merry Christmas,” the man said, smiling for a dozen television cameras.

But after Joe Roberson had wheeled out of range, he climbed out of the chair, gripped the back handles and pushed it across 5th Street.

Roberson, 63, says he’s a Vietnam veteran from Shreveport, La., and that he’s usually in the wheelchair because of his bad back. He’s lived at downtown’s Madison Hotel for nine years and said he planned to spend his $100 on canned goods and gifts for his friends at the hotel.

Oh, and blackjack. Roberson likes to play at the Commerce Casino.

“I have good days and bad days, mostly bad days now,” he said as Maria Loera, 70, wheeled by with her $100. A dwarf who stands 53 inches tall, Loera said she would save her money to replace her 2 1/2 -year-old electric wheelchair.

The chair, she said, has failing brakes and is down to one slow gear. It cost $5,500, but Medicare won’t replace it until it’s 5 years old, she said.

“I’m trying to find a bargain maybe someplace,” said Loera, who lives at the King Edward Hotel.

Chase’s giveaways often take hours, and the line was still a block long and several people wide just before 11 a.m. when Tony House, 45, spoke through rotting teeth. He lifted his sweat shirt to show a hernia jutting from his belly. Chase gave him $20.

House crossed the street and headed for a store where he said he would buy some juice. Then he would sleep off his pain near the Greyhound bus station.

Sometimes Chase gives pregnant women or mothers $100, sometimes $20 -- but there’s no guarantee. Lisa Erwin’s family of three received $6.

Erwin, 40, had seen the priest before and expected $6 to $20. She and her partner, Edwin Scott, 50, planned to spend the money on milk, potato chips and McDonald’s French fries for their 2-year-old son, Eddie.

They’ve been living on skid row for only a few months, Erwin said, but Eddie, who has blue eyes and blondish-brown hair, is already a regular. As his parents towed him in a red wagon up 5th Street on Tuesday, strangers stopped to say “Merry Christmas,” watch Eddie suck his red lollipop and make him laugh. One woman gave him a dollar. Eddie smiled and handed it to his father.

They moved up the street, toward the shelter where Eddie and his mother live. His father sleeps in a tent nearby, on the sidewalk at 3rd and San Pedro streets.

The couple, originally from the San Fernando Valley, had been living in Arizona, across the border from a casino where Scott worked, Erwin said. They moved to Los Angeles this year for better jobs. The jobs fell through, and they ran through their savings four months ago.

Scott said he had saved $500 for a new apartment. Erwin said she had lined up a job as a homeless outreach worker on skid row. She said she worried that nights on the streets were turning Scott too sarcastic, that in his absence her son was growing up angry. They dream of camping out in the woods and planting a garden.

“We’ll get out of here,” Erwin said as they walked away from Chase. “It just takes time.”

Behind them, Anthony Cernas, 7, waited his turn in line with his mother. He was dreaming of a bicycle she couldn’t afford after she lost her minimum-wage job at a Shoe Warehouse.

Chase gave Anthony $2 -- not enough for a bike.

Then he gave Anthony’s mom $20. He would get his bicycle after all. As the pair crossed Towne Avenue in search of a toy store that might be open Christmas Day, Chase handed two of his last dollar bills to a man in a blue watch cap who looked as if he was about to cry.

Patrick Givens, 44, said he thought he was through with skid row. The truck driver had spent seven months getting sober in a Pasadena program, moved into a halfway house downtown and even reconciled with his former wife.

Last week, he said, they bought a tree and presents for their two children.

Then his former wife called to say she’d changed her mind about getting back together. Givens said he drove to their house Wednesday night, gave his son $300 to buy the Sidekick cellphone he wanted for Christmas and then hit the streets “to swallow my sorrow.”

Two days ago, he lost the keys to his 2004 Kia. He was waiting for a tow truck to unlock and start the car Christmas morning, feeling ashamed and missing his kids, when he heard about the free money. He got in line.

But when he received the $2, Givens wasn’t sure what to do with it. Two dollars wouldn’t buy a decent high. It might buy a beer, he said, but he’d decided to end his binge. He needed to clear his head.

Maybe, he said, once the tow truck arrived, he would drive to his former wife’s house. She and the kids would be wondering where he was. He would explain. Then he would go to a hospital detox program and return to rehab. He just needed some gas. That $2, he said, would come in handy after all.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Donations may be sent to the Skid Row Charity Fund, 10766 National Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064.