People and Events

On the same day the self-styled “Santa of the Rich and Famous” was having his beard curled in a Beverly Hills salon before sauntering out to hear the “I wants” of the well-to-do, the mysterious man known as the “Cadillac Santa” visited Skid Row for the fifth year, distributing $10 bills to down-and-outers.

People had been waiting since Wednesday for the gray-haired man, who showed up with two “elf” helpers at the Midnight Mission on Christmas Eve to hand out about $4,500 in 25 minutes--with what mission director Clancy Imislund called “a warm handshake and a smile.”

“It’s not much,” said the Cadillac Croesus, “but it’s a hell of a lot more than nothing.”

‘Twas the day before the night before Christmas, and all through Pamela Guice’s house, not a creature was stirring . . . except, say authorities, her brother, Kelvin, who tiptoed out with toys his sister bought for her children, and then swapped them for rock cocaine.

Lennox sheriff’s deputies say Ms. Guice--”probably out of the goodness of her heart”--let her transient brother bunk down at her home. But when she awoke Thursday, “he was gone, and so were Christmas gifts bought for her two kids,” ages 1 and 2, says Sgt. Tim Youngern.

She drove around with deputies until they spotted Kelvin, who admitted taking the gifts--including some Tonka toys--to get rock cocaine, “and that’s even lower,” says Youngern. He was booked on a misdemeanor petty theft charge.

“It still ends up being a merry Christmas for her,” said Youngern. Deputy Greer Patton managed to buy replacement toys, “so it wasn’t a total loss.” But Ms. Guice “probably won’t be taking him in again.”

Where there’s a won’t, there’s a way.

Since the Topanga Plaza, like some other malls, hasn’t permitted Salvation Army bell ringers to set up their clang-and-kettle collectors next to mall entrances, the Salvation Army has tried something new.

Perched instead on a parking lot median, workers toting butterfly-like nets had a “great” day collecting from sympathetic motorists to use at their Van Nuys shelter this weekend.

With the fishnet funds, “we can continue being fishers of men, with blankets and love and hot soup and food,” said Salvation Army Capt. John Purdell.

As for the controversial clang of the bells, Purdell broke into song--”Silver Bells”--and remarked, “We’re as Christmas as holly.”

Christmas comes but once each year . . . for the next 19 years.

St. Nick visited Carlos Olvera in a ceremony at a Gardena liquor store Thursday, with the first of 20 lottery checks for $1,005,600, after Olvera--until recently a shop supervisor--won $25.1 million, the largest prize to date in the state Lotto 6/49 drawing.

Olvera has already bought a new Mercedes and made a down payment on a house, say lottery officials. His wife, Sofia, a cosmetics saleswoman, said she would “complete the orders she had and kind of hang it up.”

It may have been a beer that made Milwaukee famous, but it’s the horses that put St. Louis’ brew on the map.

On Thursday, four Budweiser Clydesdale horses took their only test trot before the Rose Parade, pulling St. Louis’ 35th annual parade float on a dry run near the Rose Bowl. Come New Year’s Day, they’ll tow the real thing down Colorado Boulevard: a fantasy village of yore with Christmas carolers and a chimney sweep cleaning the flue for you-know-who.

You know their faces: men whose sad demeanors have helped to raise thousands of dollars for the homeless through newspaper ads for the Los Angeles Mission.

In case you ever wondered about them:

For 20 years, the mission and its staff have been the only life World War II veteran Harry Jones, 84, has had. But Jones, suffering memory loss and a hearing problem, spent the holiday in a veterans’ hospital.

For seven years, Tony Nelson, 61, drifted around the country before settling in as the mission’s night watchman. “When I got to L.A. and saw all the guys laying in the street,” he says, “it just didn’t seem that great to be wandering around any more.”