Creans Put on Their Game Face for a Super Benefit

For sports fans, watching the Super Bowl at the Village Crean on Sunday was the next best thing to being there.

John and Donna Crean opened their Tara-inspired mansion in Santa Ana Heights to about 200 guests for a lavish Super Bowl party that even featured a live halftime performance by the Newport Harbor High School Sailor Band. Guests paid $100 each to attend the party and silent auction, netting about $25,000 for the Juvenile Connection Program, part of the Orange-based Coalition for Children, Adolescents and Parents (C-CAP).

Armchair Quarterbacks

The Village Crean was equipped with everything but a football field for the big game.

To make sure everyone had a good view of the showdown between the Dallas Cowboys and Buffalo Bills, the Creans set up a dozen big-screen televisions throughout the premises. A mini-theater equipped with several dozen easy chairs and a massive TV screen was reserved for serious football fans.

“What better place to watch the Super Bowl?” asked Lynne Tsuda, event co-chairwoman and soon-to-be-disappointed Buffalo Bills fan.

“Vendors” roamed the mansion passing out bags of popcorn and hot pretzels. Guests lined up in the back yard for burgers, hot dogs and other standard stadium fare. Throughout the day they visited a dessert table decorated like a football field and piled high with cookies and football-shaped brownies.

Among the celebrities attending was the Creans’ longtime friend Sandra Gould, who played nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz on the ‘60s TV series “Bewitched.”

“Wherever I go, people recognize me,” Gould said. “I’m dubbed in Japanese, and when I was in Japan shooting a commercial they all came up to me and started talking in Japanese.”

Gould, a Studio City resident, sported sunglasses with one lens missing.

“The earthquake broke six pairs of my glasses,” she said. “We lost a lot. I’m going to need another series.”

Helping Families at Risk

For the Creans, throwing a Super Bowl party for their friends is an annual tradition, but four years ago they decided to turn it into a fund-raiser.

“C-CAP needed a fund-raiser, and my husband had been saying for several years that he didn’t understand why some charity didn’t snap up the Super Bowl party,” said event chairwoman Donna Crean, who hosts numerous charity events at her home each year. “Now we invite our friends and ask them to pay.”

The coalition offers educational programs to help prevent unintended adolescent pregnancy in Orange County. Proceeds from the party were earmarked for C-CAP’s Juvenile Connection Program, which provides an assessment and referral service to families in crisis. The program’s goal is to keep children from engaging in “at-risk behavior.”

“It could be as simple as taking a child to one of our dermatologists for tattoo removal to get him away from the gang influence or as severe as counseling a teen who is suicidal,” says Rowene Medina, board president of C-CAP.

The coalition can refer clients to more than 250 providers, including dentists, doctors and counselors, who offer services to the needy families for free or for reduced fees.

“The whole idea of C-CAP is you can’t just treat the child, you have to treat the whole family,” Medina said. “We try to take care of the problem before the child ends up in juvenile detention.”

Other guests were: Cynthia Scheinberg, executive director of C-CAP; Lee and Kathleen Goldberg, vice president of C-CAP; Michael Schumacher, C-CAP board member and Orange County Probation chief; actor Richard Moll, formerly of “Night Court,” and his wife, Susan; Buzz and Lois Aldrin; Andy Crean; Don and Patricia Boortz; Yen Ngoc Do; Hiangkie Han; Michael and Grace Gatti; Joe and Linda Martin, and Jay and Maryjane Palchikoff.