Givers of Good Cheer : Groups Lift Yuletide Spirits at Hospitals, Jail

For 10 years, Paul Walters has helped lengthen the lives of children with cancer by checking their blood as a lab technician at UC San Diego Medical Center.

But to the many children who depend on him and others at UCSD for life, Walters brings no more visible joy than when he masquerades as Santa Claus once a year. As the jolly fat man, Walters symbolizes the friendships and love that have developed between the staff of the pediatric cancer division and their many patients whose chances for long-term survival grow better with each passing year.

So every holiday season for the past decade, the children--from infants to teens--are treated to the spirit of Christmas by their medical friends. Last week’s gathering followed the clinic’s tradition, featuring plenty of food, gifts and celebration of a promise not to let cancer overwhelm the pleasures of daily life.

The UCSD doctors and nurses are representative of those individuals motivated during the holiday season to share happiness with people whose circumstances are not always joyous.

During the past couple of weeks, a group of San Diego comedians and singers volunteered a Saturday afternoon to entertain prisoners at the county jail downtown during the first-ever Christmas party there. Trauma nurses at Scripps Memorial Hospital had a party with punch, cookies and smiles for the patients who would not be alive today were the year-old special system for severely injured persons not in effect. And mariachis serenaded the kidney dialysis ward at UCSD Medical Center in a tradition going back a decade.

In all cases, the party planners had as good a time as the guests.

“It’s a chance to give back something in return for (the good) that has been given us,” said Barbara Wolfinbarger, a counselor at the jail who planned the prisoner party.

“This is MY day!” Paul Walters, a.k.a. Santa Claus, exclaimed as the 50th--or maybe it was the 60th--person climbed onto his lap for some special words of encouragement and a gift.

“How are you feeling? Have you been pretty good this year? What would you like for Christmas?” Walters asked all of his charges, speaking Spanish when necessary.

Several of the younger children squealed with delight at the sight of Santa. Even the 16- and 17-year-olds were told, albeit good-naturedly, by Dr. Faith Kung, head of the clinic’s child cancer treatment, that there would be “no gift without sitting on Santa’s lap,” despite cases such as Cesar Luiz, who is now bigger than Santa.

“We’ve treated Cesar since he was 4,” Kung beamed proudly as she gave the healthy youngster a hug, noting that 10 years ago the prognosis for years of survival for children with leukemia and other blood-related cancers was far poorer than today.

“The kids don’t dwell on their disease, which is the way adults should approach it as well,” Kung said, motioning to young patients oblivious to their thinned hair, a consequence of drug or radiation therapy. “And now, for the first time, people we first treated as kids are getting married and having children.”

The many doctors and nurses, as well as the children, alternated between the party room and the clinic, carrying out regular monthly blood checks between visits to Santa and the buffet table. Technician Cleopatra Cloud surveyed the multi-ethnic chaos and grinned broadly, recognizing many of her patients eagerly opening their presents.

“What’s so funny is that I know all of these kids because I see them every week in doing their blood,” Walters said. “But none of them recognize me as Santa Claus when I sit here.

“It’s a thrill to see them happy and smiling. There’s nothing sad at all about being here. No way. It’s the lab’s biggest thrill of the year.”

Pediatric counselor Lourdes McQuown took charge of planning the party this year. “We start with contributions . . . and keep going with contributions,” she said. The Hilton hotel at Mission Bay donated many of the toys for gifts, and parents of individuals treated at the clinic also chipped in.

“For a few, perhaps this may be the last Christmas,” said McQuown, who lost a child to cancer almost eight years ago. “But today, the chances are good that most of the children will be around again and again for the holidays.”

That’s the best reason to celebrate for both the kids and the doctors.

Barbara Wolfinbarger wanted to give inmates at the County Jail downtown something to celebrate this year. So she and local comic Joe Vecchio rounded up a group of her comedian friends from the local Laughmasters Club, a group of actors who are also recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, and some local professional entertainers for a Saturday afternoon jailhouse variety review.

The jokes at times poked fun at the darker side of prison life.

“Our time is almost over,” comedian Isla Cottrell said into the microphone as the routines neared an end. “Don’t you wish yours was too?”

And Rick Rockwell, a regular on the local television show “Larry Himmel At Large,” offered to auction off a “Roger Hedgecock Getaway Weekend,” a not-so-subtle dig at the former mayor who could wind up at the jail should his appeal of felony convictions for violating campaign financing laws fail.

But all the participants were convinced that they were really bringing a bit of happiness, if only momentarily, to the lives of people who obviously wished they were elsewhere. The 100 prisoners invited to the jail’s roof for the show were handpicked from the 700 who cram the facility daily. And despite their tattoos and macho swagger, the prisoners appeared to sense that the volunteer entertainers had sympathy, as well as empathy in a few cases, for their plight.

During the caroling finale, most of the prisoners joined in off-key but nevertheless spirited renditions of “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

The group of actors and singers recovering from alcohol and drug abuse performed an X-rated version of “Twelve Days of Christmas,” to the cheers of prisoners. “Today was fun, although we hope to come back in a more serious vein in January,” said Earl Thielen, spokesman for Progress Not Perfection Players. “We’re trying to return some of the help that we got to set our lives straight.”

Comedian Michael Gardner had the house roaring with his rendition of “The Night Before Christmas in Transylvania.” But Gardner also kidded his way through a less enjoyable part of his life, when he himself was in county jail after a self-described “flipping out.”

“Today I’m back to show these guys that if I could get out then they know there is a chance for them to get out,” said Gardner, now a counselor at Sharp Cabrillo Hospital as well as a stand-up comic. Gardner skipped another routine he normally does, imitating the sounds of being booked into jail.

But he did say that Santa Claus would be around to give out keys as presents. “But none of them work! Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!”

The idea of a Christmas party for former trauma patients struck the nurses at Scripps Memorial Hospital as a chance to see their former charges in a healthy condition.

“So many of these people are so sick or injured when they come in, and we never get a chance to see them after they’re discharged,” trauma clinician Cheryl Wooten said.

So when nurse Pauline Himmen-Larson and former patient John Chambers, an accident victim, spotted each other at the party, they immediately embraced, with the strapping Chambers lifting Pauline a couple of feet into the air.

Therapy nurses came over to Chambers and kidded him about how he always fought their efforts to work with his damaged body.

Wooten enthusiastically ran up to Michael Sparks: “You look wonderful!” she said, having remembered him only as a severely injured motorcycle victim. As she called out his name, other staff members threw their hands up in glee, not believing that the clean-shaven Sparks could be the same person who had barely survived his accident only several months earlier.

Many staffers identified the guests after hearing an account of their accident and reading the name tag. “Gee, they look so different now!” nurse Jackie Secrett said. “It’s so nice to see them in one piece!”

Added Secrett: “They should make everyone come lying horizontal and in a hospital gown so we can recognize them.”

There were reminders, however, that trauma victims originally came to Scripps not out of choice. Rob Braasch of Encinitas came in his wheelchair, his right leg still needing extensive rehabilitation. He had been returning from Disneyland with his wife, two children and two women visitors from Switzerland when their car was slammed by a drunken driver along Interstate 5 near Camp Pendleton. One Swiss woman was killed, and the other returned to her home country severely crippled.

Braasch said, “This is an important function for me to come to,” if only to meet consciously for the first time the people who took care of him during the first critical hours, such as Marilyn Smith of the emergency room.

“I remember you,” Smith told him, although Braasch only vaguely recalled a woman telling him to turn over on his side for X-rays.

Frank Pena’s mariachi band has been serenading UCSD San Diego kidney dialysis patients at Christmas for a decade, having been brought in originally by one of his band members who himself underwent the thrice-weekly treatment for many years.

Now he is joined annually at the festivities by Dr. David Ward, dressed as Santa Claus.

“Many of these patients look forward to the band year after year,” Ward, who directs the dialysis section, said. “It’s tedious to come in for the treatment all the time, but we can give these people an excellent quality of life now--and a little extra treat at Christmas.”

The party originally was not scheduled for this year because the dialysis unit is being remodeled and is presently housed in a temporary area. But so many patients asked for the band that administrators relented, renal administrator Terry Bahr said.

Bahr annually takes the band on a tour of the hospital after its stint with the adult dialysis patients. This year, the four-member musical group discovered 2-year-old Abraham Damien alone in a special unit receiving his three-day-a-week, 10-hour-a-day kidney treatment on a special machine designed for small children.

Abraham stared wide-eyed as the band played a special song for him, and he broke into a soft smile and tentative goodby wave only as Frank Pena wished him a Feliz Navidad.

For the teary-eyed nurses and doctors, no translation was needed.