Dolls Come Full Circle--as Gift to Police

She was four feet tall, dressed neatly in a print smock and Oxford shoes, and she was being unceremoniously thrown over the hood of a car on Hoover Street near the USC campus when a traffic officer mistook her for a child being beaten.

Herman Charlton’s dolls were getting involved with the police--again.

The officer recognized his mistake and told the woman, who was unloading a trunk full of the black, handmade, Raggedy Ann-type dolls from her car, that the toys would be appreciated by young victims who are brought to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Abused Child Unit. The suggestion led to a donation of 50 dolls to the unit.

The contribution by Joyce White, a distributor for Charlton’s House of Dolls ‘N’ Things, was ironic, given the decade-long, contentious relationship between the dolls’ maker and Los Angeles authorities.

Toy maker Charlton, known to many as the “Doll Baby Man” from South Los Angeles, said that since the early ‘80s, he has experienced several unwarranted arrests on charges of loitering and selling without a permit. One time, Charlton said, narcotics detectives knifed open a dozen of his 10-inch dolls, expecting to find cocaine concealed inside. They found none.

Times change, Charlton acknowledged. White added that the donation will benefit child-abuse victims who need the comfort a huggable doll can bring.

“Usually children who have been physically or sexually abused are brought to us without anything except for the clothes on their back,” said Juvenile Division Detective Bobby Smith. “The dolls help ease some of the pain of what they’ve gone through. It’s nice to have something for them just to hold on to--to cling to.”