Officer’s Giving Way Provides Food for All : LAPD Veteran Raises Ante, Takes 1,200 Pounds of Turkey to Mission

It is unlikely that anyone guessed what was in the blue Los Angeles Police Department wagon lumbering along the San Bernardino Freeway toward downtown Los Angeles:

Nearly 1,200 pounds of frozen turkeys.

The birds were on their way to the Midnight Mission to become Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless and hungry--some of whom may also have been occasional passengers in that unpleasant vehicle.

At the wheel was Hollywood vice officer Steve Grabell, 42, a veteran of the Marine Corps and Vietnam who has been with the Police Department for 15 years.

Grabell said that as he drove his load of turkeys, he had to laugh at the thought of waking up Thanksgiving morning and saying to himself: “Hey, I’m feeding all of downtown. Ain’t that neat?”

Actually, he will not be feeding quite that many people.

The officer, who last Thanksgiving donated $500 for enough turkey to provide several hundred meals, decided this year to go one better and supply the turkeys needed to feed all 3,000 expected guests at the Midnight Mission.

He bought 58 frozen turkeys from an El Monte wholesaler at the then-going rate of 78 cents a pound (which cost him slightly more than $900) and persuaded a part-owner of Nagle’s Veal in downtown Los Angeles to store them free until time to deliver the birds to the mission.

Hollywood Division Capt. Ed Brown gave him permission to use the police wagon to move the turkeys from El Monte to the interim storage. “Otherwise,” Grabell said, “I would have had to rent a truck.”

The mustachioed Grabell, whose sideline is making stained-glass windows, could not recall exactly how he happened to make the donation last year. “I don’t remember whether I saw something on TV or got something in the mail,” he said. “But it had to do with feeding people at the mission.

“I had a $500 check in my pocket that a friend had given me for building him a stained-glass window. I thought, ‘Why not? I’m gonna do this. What else am I going to do with the money?’ I had the money. Rather than blowing it on something, I felt . . . it would be a good idea to feed these people.”

Grabell added, “At Thanksgiving, they really don’t have much to be thankful about. . . . Everybody eats on Thanksgiving.”

Lt. Art Lopez of Hollywood vice said Grabell told him that he thought everyone should have turkey on Thanksgiving. “I thought it was one of the most unselfish things I’d ever heard of,” Lopez said.

Bob Leonard, the Midnight Mission’s head chef, said Grabell’s gift is the largest single donation he can recall. The vice officer, he said, “just came in and completely flabbergasted us.”

Mission Director Clancy Imislund said that when Grabell first walked in last year, “we were a little dubious. People come in and say, ‘I’d like to give you a vast amount of something and I’m a vice policeman,’ and you think, ‘Oh, really? What are you bringing me, a group of subpoenas or something?’ ”

But, as it turned out, Grabell did exactly what he offered to do.

“We were heartened and warmed by it,” Imislund said. “This year when he came in, he was a known quantity and we were glad to see him again.”

Getting the turkeys turned out to be tougher than Grabell imagined. “I was going to buy early,” he said, “figuring that turkeys would be cheaper out of season. I was wrong. It was too early and as a result there weren’t a lot of turkeys for sale.” And they were expensive.

Once again, the money came from Grabell’s stained-glass window business. (“I love to make pictures--especially eagles or ducks. . . . “)

Grabell, a bachelor who doesn’t drink and enjoys a quiet life, takes an interest in bloodhounds and “working artistically with my hands.” He also likes to play the banjo. He can be found often taking lessons at the Blue Ridge Pickin’ Parlor in Canoga Park.

“I stink,” he said of his banjo playing.

He has done all of his police tours in Hollywood Division and detective headquarters as a liaison with the city attorney’s office. He has never been assigned to Central Division, where most of the homeless men frequenting the mission live.