Grove Benefactor Tells All, but Not to Her Husband

Call her the Phantom of the Grove.

She’s the anonymous, 38-year-old Costa Mesa resident whose $10,000 contribution last month pulled the Grove Shakespeare Festival back from the brink.

She surfaced recently for an interview with The Times, granted on the condition of continued anonymity.

“I’ll probably earn less than $20,000 this year,” she said. The money “came to me in a windfall. . . . I was going to put it toward paying off my mortgage. My husband doesn’t know what I’ve done. I think in the long run he would support it, but in the short run it might wound him. He trusts my judgment. But it’s not fair to say, ‘Dear, we had $10,000, and I’ve just decided to give it away to save a cultural institution.’ ”

Her donation was prompted by an article about the theater’s plight. When she finished reading it, “I was burning with this incredible white-hot anger. The possibility that the theater was going to be sent down the toilet for a pathetic $21,000, which the Garden Grove City Council refused to give them, was the final straw.

“It was one of the those moments where some people might grab an AK-47 and go out and shoot up the local hamburger joint. For me, giving away that $10,000 was my AK-47. But instead of turning my anger into violence, I did the most useful thing I’ve ever done in my life. When I hung up the phone (after offering the money), I was shaking. And then I felt as if this tremendous load had been lifted. I felt surrounded by white light. I felt nothing could hurt me.”

She refused free tickets to the Grove’s current show and insisted on anonymity because “I hope my gift is a real statement against all these donors who have to get their names on a wall or a plaque or a building.”

She has never been involved in theater, “but I think the theater is dependent upon people like me who are mesmerized by how wonderful it is.” Yet she also admitted she has seen “a lot of duds.”

Her final observation: “If I ever win the lottery, I’m going to hire someone to attend the Garden Grove City Council meetings with a trumpet. And every time someone uses an expression that Shakespeare introduced into the language, this person will give a trumpet blast. That would give me a tremendous pleasure.”