ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Holiday Spirit Eludes Busy Officials : Bankruptcy: With its endless meetings and long workdays, the crisis costs them their personal lives. The turmoil affects their families too.

When he hauled out the ladder and decorated his Woodbridge home with colored lights a little early this season, Irvine City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. thought he was getting the jump on the Christmas chores.

As it turns out, it was probably one of the few festive things he’ll have a chance to do.

“Basically, I’ve put things on hold from a personal standpoint,” said Brady, who has been working 18-hour days since Orange County declared bankruptcy. “We’ve already canceled our vacation during the Christmas holidays because of all this. It puts a damper on some of the social things that I would normally do.”

Like scores of other public officials in the county--from county administrators to city and school district managers--Brady has lost any semblance of a personal life as he tries to keep up with the day-to-day developments of the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider says he’s just about living in his office these days. Hecklers shout at him at supervisors’ meetings and reporters call him at home. And if it isn’t bad enough that the thrill of the holiday season is dampened, Dec. 25 is his birthday.

Carleen Wing Chandler says her job as assistant superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District is usually busy but routine. Lately, said Chandler, “my life has been taken over by meetings.”

For Brady, the county bankruptcy filing is akin to a natural disaster.

“In my 37 years in the business,” he said, “this is the most difficult crisis-oriented event I’ve ever been involved with, and there have been many. Fires, earthquakes, nothing compares to this.”

Brady says the city of Irvine has $209 million in the Orange County investment pool, with $27 million of it coming from retirement pension funds. Since the financial fiasco began, the city manager says, he has been arriving to work at 6:30 a.m., spending most of his time in meetings and returning home 12 or 13 hours later to field telephone calls late into the night.

“Normally, he and I go shopping for the little ones, our grandchildren, together,” said Charlotte Brady. “And I’m sure he’s very disappointed that he won’t be able to do that. But this is serious, this is very serious, and it’s his job.”

The Bradys are expecting their six grown children, five grandchildren and a dozen other relatives at their home on Christmas Eve. In preparation for a turkey and ham buffet, Charlotte Brady says she spends her days baking cookies and planning the meal, hoping all the while that her husband doesn’t catch the laryngitis she’s been fighting.

“The hardest thing for me is that there’s no way I can help him,” she said. “He’s not getting much sleep, and with something like this you don’t eat right. I want him to stay healthy.”

Brady, 53, who has been with the city of Irvine since its incorporation in 1971, says he has addressed the more than 500 Irvine city employees in the last few days, trying to keep them up on the latest information.

“It’s frustrating, because it’s nothing you can take charge of. It’s out of our hands,” he said. “I’m the kind of person who likes to take control, and you have no control over this.”

Schneider says he is trying desperately to take control of the “horrific nightmare” facing Orange County and his family this holiday season.

Working on three to four hours of sleep, Schneider says, he spends his days in back-to-back meetings in attempts to “put my arms around the problem and deal with the situation,” only to come home to face reporters in the front yard and the family phone ringing off the hook.

“I haven’t seen my son in three weeks, unless he’s asleep,” he said with exasperation. “It’s like I don’t even know when I get home. I just grab a bite to eat and go to bed. I’ve really neglected my home, I’ve neglected my family. . . . This is a nightmare.”

Schneider’s wife, Sally, says that any gifts she’s bought for her husband and their 13-year-old son, Nicholas, were purchased before the crisis.

“All of this is bad enough for everyone in Orange County,” she said. “But I’m most unsettled because it’s a problem that affects us personally. Seeing your name in the newspapers connected with this thing is really awful. . . . It’s really taking its toll.”

One of the few signs of Christmas in their San Juan Capistrano home, she says, is an artificial tree that has yet to be decorated.

“I haven’t been in the mood to decorate it, and haven’t done any (Christmas) shopping since this whole thing started,” she said. “What I have done is lost weight, but I wouldn’t wish this kind of diet on anyone. . . . We’ve all been through the wringer.”

Schneider turns 48 on Dec. 25, a birthday he says will not be much worth celebrating this year. Not only is he trying to “pick up the pieces” of a county in shambles, but he has been held responsible for the crisis by those who say he failed to keep close enough tabs on recently resigned Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron and his investment decisions.

“This is the worst Christmas I’ve had since my father died, and that was 18 years ago,” Schneider said. “The joy and spirit have gone out of it this year. I haven’t bought a single present--not one--and I probably won’t. I haven’t thought about Christmas at all, and it’s my birthday.”

Even in good times, Schneider says, he works from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., but the bankruptcy crisis has pushed those hours around the clock. A fitness buff, he says he hasn’t exercised and has lost about 10 pounds from the stress.

“I try to keep it in perspective,” he said. “There are a lot of people out there worse off than I am.”

Chandler says she has done “absolutely nothing” to prepare for the holidays. With more than $74 million in the Orange County investment pool, the Capistrano school district’s assistant superintendent in charge of business and fiscal services has had a lot on her mind.

“I normally decorate my house and bring a few things into the office,” Chandler said. “But what’s normal with all this?”

Sitting in her office near a cluster of colored balloons, cards and a banner her staff draped in celebration of her 43rd birthday last week, Chandler tells of spending less time with her husband, Ray, and more time fielding phone calls.

“The calls are everything from the parents of the children to (district) employees,” she said. “I just tell the parents that we will try to keep the lives of our kids as normal as possible, and we’re telling them that we are trying to protect all new revenue that’s coming into the district. Education is our highest priority.”

The Capistrano Unified School District has 3,500 employees, making it the largest employer in south Orange County. Chandler says her office, which handles the budget and financial operations for the district, is in the process of completing cash flow documents for the district’s 12 operating funds and looking at the next six months for possible revenues.

She has met with the County Department of Education and held several meetings “to calm our employees.”

“The most distressing thing is that everything that I would normally be doing and should be doing gets lost in this,” she said. “My mom is coming out next week, but I’m going to try to keep her out of it . . . maybe even get out of town for a few days.”