Shoppers Feel the Rush of Final Gift Buying : Holidays: Rainy weather doesn’t dampen last-minute push in stores to find the perfect present before Christmas Day.

Frenzied last-minute shoppers braved crowded, rain-slicked roads Saturday, jamming store aisles and mall parking lots in an 11th-hour Christmas Eve search for the perfect gift.

And just about every shopper had an excuse for procrastinating.

Standing atop a dumpster filled with fragrant fir trees on the site of what used to be a Christmas tree lot in Thousand Oaks, Mike Hanover blamed shifting family plans for waiting so long to pick out a tree--and getting stuck with the leavings.

“We were supposed to be in Big Bear, but everyone got sick,” he said Saturday, poking through the discards.

In Ventura, woodworker Pat Milman, 32, waited in a line that stretched the length of four storefronts on the sidewalk leading to the HoneyBaked Ham store. The shopping trip from his home in Oxnard did not really count as last-minute, he said, because he ordered the 10-pound ham over the telephone two weeks ago.

Picking up the ham too far ahead of time is bad strategy because “you want it fresh,” he said.

Wheeling a grocery cart full of Christmas ornaments through the aisles of Green Thumb International in Ventura, Nancy Velasquez denied that she was last-minute shopping at all. In fact, she said, she was way ahead of the game.

“I’m shopping for next year,” she said.

At K mart in Ventura, Alex Lopez, 22, said she was not doing her own shopping, but simply helping out a friend who was too busy with wedding preparations to shop for herself.

Inside The Gold Store, a Thousand Oaks jewelry shop, Greg Taylor said he had not had any time to shop until Saturday. He said he had been too busy working, earning money to pay for the silver necklace he was buying for his girlfriend.

For the few who confessed to being last-minute shoppers, and even for some who did not, love--or marriage--was a frequently cited factor.

Waiting for his holiday ham, Milman had this to say: “My wife must have known what the line was going to be like, so she sent me instead.”

Even big-ticket items were fair game in the Christmas Eve rush.

At Nesen Lexus at the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall, sales manager Mitch Bohn said he sold three of the luxury automobiles Saturday, all of them to husbands wanting to surprise their wives. Bohn said he supplied one shopper with a $28 gold-colored bow to place atop the $66,000 car.

And at The Gold Store, Dave Grove, 27, a Thousand Oaks aircraft mechanic, happily admired the diamond engagement ring he had given Twila Monroe, 30, a legal secretary. He proposed to Monroe Saturday morning.

“I couldn’t wait” for Christmas Day, Grove said. They had returned to the store to have the ring sized to fit Monroe’s finger.

The steady rainfall and crowded roads delayed mail deliveries in some areas until late afternoon on one of the busiest postal days of the year--in some cases jeopardizing delivery of last-minute gifts sent through the mail.

And the wet weather delayed takeoff of a helicopter-drawn Santa and sleigh, which make annual Christmas Eve appearances in the night sky over Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Camarillo and Ventura.

A spokesman for Aspen Helicopters said the flying Santa’s schedule over much of the west county was curtailed because of the rain and low-lying clouds.

For many shoppers, though, the rain was no deterrent. After all, there were still gifts to be bought.

Just after 6 p.m., less than an hour before closing time at Salzer’s Records in Ventura, Julie Richardson, 24, still needed presents for her grandmother and her cousin. She was having a tough time settling on the right present, picking up item after item before replacing them on the store’s shelves.

“My cousin likes dolphins,” she said during her search for dolphin-related music. But there weren’t any dolphins to be found, and, as Christmas songs blared on the store’s speakers, Richardson said she wished that the last minutes of shopping time would expire and that Christmas would finally arrive.

“I’m kind of zoned out at this point,” she said.