Grinch Hits Town Early : Christmas Tree Thief Puts Cloud on Holiday for Inglewood Family

The Grinch who stole Christmas has the police on his trail.

He’s the thief who crept into the front yard of an Inglewood home and chopped down a decorated 12-foot Monterey pine that had become an annual holiday landmark on West 111th Street.

The 15-year-old tree had been decorated yearly by Ricardo Hernandez and his family. This year, it had grown tall enough to hold more than 200 lights, garlands of tinsel and 50 festive ornaments.

Hernandez discovered Wednesday morning that the tree was gone. But around the stump was something that was almost as good as footprints in the snow.

“There was a trail of needles going down the sidewalk,” said Hernandez, a 36-year-old welder. “I followed them two blocks down to Crenshaw Boulevard.”

There, the needles led to an alley behind a liquor store. They continued toward a nearby apartment complex. After a few minutes of searching, Hernandez found his tree sitting on the porch next to an apartment.

When Inglewood police came to investigate the theft, they accompanied Hernandez to the apartment, he said. But it wasn’t the Grinch’s house.

“It was some old man with six kids. He said he had bought the tree a little earlier for $7 from a wino,” Hernandez said.

“The police said I could take the tree back, but the people who had it looked poor. I said what’s the use--I don’t want to take it back just to sit and watch it die. The guy who bought it only wanted a tree for his kids.”

Hernandez returned to a home filled with empty hearts.

His wife, Amalia, was crying. So where his three girls, Ruth, 9, Xochilt, 8, and Xylina, 2, who had decorated the tree a few days earlier.

“It had taken 15 years for that tree to grow. And somebody had killed it in the minute or two it took to cut it down,” Hernandez said Thursday.

“The kids were upset that somebody could steal a Christmas tree. I tried to convince them that they couldn’t steal the Christmas spirit. I tried to tell them that they can steal a tree, but not the spirit.”

Neighbors who have looked forward every year to seeing the Hernandez tree brightly decorated were less charitable. They decided that the chopping was the work of the ultimate Humbug.

“It’s awful. Especially at this time of year, and to steal that kind of thing,” Luis Frias said. “Everybody around here is real depressed.”

Said another neighbor, Wendell Brooks: “It’s a sad thing. It doesn’t make sense why someone would steal a Christmas tree.”

Inglewood police said they are on the lookout for the suspected chopper. He will face petty theft charges if caught, said department spokeswoman Linda Kalaydjian.

“Someone has certainly forgotten what the whole purpose of Christmas is,” she said.

Not Hernandez, however. He said he hopes his stolen tree brings holiday joy to the impoverished family that now has it.

“They are victims, too,” he said.