Holiday Volunteers in Corona : Christmas Was Another Day on the Job for Some

Dan Baynard needed to pay for his kids’ gifts. Shirley Graves figured it was better than staying home alone.

Beverly Bieber wanted to let others spend the day with their families. Michael Tripet didn’t really have much choice.

So they worked on Christmas Day.

“I volunteered . . . for the extra money,” said Baynard, a Riverside father of two who spent his Christmas Day 30 feet underground monitoring AT&T;’s West Coast long-distance network in its south Corona computer facility.

The overtime he logged “in the hole,” Baynard said, will help pay for all those gifts his children opened at 5:30 Christmas morning, before Dad left for work. “We just planned our Christmas around it.”

Sons Away

Graves’ two sons were away for Christmas--one was in Oregon and one was spending the holiday with his girlfriend’s family. Rather than stay home alone, she spent the day bagging groceries in the family’s store.

“I’m the boss’s wife,” she said, deftly tossing a six-pack of Coke from her right hand to her left. “I don’t normally work here. . . . It’s the first time I’ve ever worked on Christmas in my life.”

After Graves and her husband closed the store, she said, they would go home to Orange, open their presents, then “probably go to the race track and eat roast beef sandwiches.”

Bieber, a longtime Corona resident, was working because she thought some of the other nurses at Circle City Hospital would appreciate having Christmas Day off. “Since my children are grown, I (said I) would take a turn for those who have young children,” she said.

Besides, Bieber had been invited to three Christmas dinners--one with her “surrogate family” the night before, a free buffet at the hospital Wednesday, “and I’m invited out for another meal” after work, she said.

Part of Job

For Tripet, a Corona police officer, giving up holidays--in this case Christmas Eve and Christmas Day--was part of the choice he made when he decided to switch to a career in law enforcement. “If I worked in a grocery store, which I used to do, I think I would feel a little cheated,” he said.

Tripet added that he did manage to share at least some of Christmas with his brothers and parents. Tripet drove to his parents’ home in La Mirada after his shift ended at 10 o’clock Tuesday night.

The ham was cold by then, “but it was still good,” Tripet recalled with a smile as he cruised through the streets of Cresta Verde in northeastern Corona. Wednesday’s swing shift was so quiet, though, that Tripet spent much the evening catching up on paper work.

For others, Christmas Day was just as quiet. Mohammed Riaz, an attendant at a Norco filling station, said most of his customers were asking for directions rather than gasoline.

Riaz whiled away the afternoon sharing a paper plate of Christmas dinner with his wife before she had to go to work at a nearby convenience store.

Visitors Bring Goodies

And Norco firefighters who had to man the station spent the day welcoming visitors who brought cookies and other goodies to the five-man crew.

Outside of several medical calls, the firefighters had a quiet day--except for Capt. Ed Braden. It was his turn to cook.

Braden spent a good portion of the day tending a turkey in the oven, and it won rave reviews from his subordinates. “It was real good,” Engineer Ken Leach said. “I’m up for evaluation, so it was real good.”

Leach had spent the afternoon working on “station improvement,” he said, painting a makeshift court for a foam-ball tennis game in the rear parking lot.

“It’s usually a tough day,” Braden said. “There’s nothing to do.”