With the Patience of a Saint (Nick) : THE CART ATTENDANT : ‘People Need Them Inside . . . Now’

By the thousands we come, bearing boxes that must be gift-wrapped, buying trees that must be perfect, and scrounging for carts that all seem to be occupied.

It is the time of year when shoppers test the patience of the holiday work force--when we make demands that would cause Jolly Old St. Nick to grumble.

But out there among the ceaseless carols and flocked window displays is a hardy breed of worker who, despite the holiday madness, wants only to see us happy: among them, Martin Ortega, a gift-wrap department supervisor; Virgil Fadenrecht, a Christmas tree salesman; and Dagan Wallace, a shopping cart rounder-upper.

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There are 650 shopping carts at the Target store on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, and Dagan Wallace cares deeply about each and every one of them.

Oh no! There’s one bolting toward the stairwell at breakneck speed. Wallace sprints after it and grabs it, averting certain disaster.

Concerned but not angry, he coos to the little runaway, “It’s OK now, I gotcha. Everything’s OK.”

Wallace, 18, arrived in California from Arkansas four months ago and landed the position of shopping cart attendant that very afternoon. He earns $5 to $6 per hour, and during the holidays he works six and seven days a week collecting, comforting and cajoling Target’s unruly red carts.

It is an unenviable task--to everyone but Wallace. “I count myself very, very lucky. I plan to move on up in life. But for now, I plain love what I do.”

No kidding. At home at night, he lifts weights to be strong for his four-wheeled pets. He carries a walkie-talkie on his hip “for emergencies” and routinely scours the neighborhood for carts ruthlessly abducted and abandoned far from home.

The challenge during these last frantic shopping days, Wallace says, is keeping up with the demand for his carts. As fast as he collects them, shoppers whisk them away.

“This job looks like it’s kind of haphazard--you know, walking around, grabbing carts here and there. But if you watch me closely, you will see there is nothing random about it. I got a method.

“Now, watch this. Here are a few stragglers, hiding in the corner. This is not a good place for them. People need them inside and they need them now.

“See, I’m walking up here, scanning the garage area. Those are the baby carts. Leave them till last. They’ll wait. Make myself a mental map of where everybody is. . . .

“Let’s go get that one by the elevator first. OK, now see how I pull him up here against a post? OK. Wheels nice and still. That’s good. Now, race over here to get that other one. I don’t take my eyes off the first one. Just keep glancing back all the time, making sure he stays put.”

Wallace would not dream of asking Target guests (he never calls them customers) to walk their carts back to the corral. If they do, he is pleased and effusively grateful. “But I wouldn’t expect it. This is my job, you know.”

Wallace prefers to gather his carts in “gangs” of at least 20 before returning to the store. “If I get a whole big crowd of ‘em, it’s pushing, oh, 200 pounds for sure.”

But at closing time, when the garage is almost empty, he moves even longer, heavier lines of carts. And every night, he competes against his own “personal best”--that unforgettable evening he moved a single line of 72 carts.

“Yes, ma’am. Seventy-two. All at once. Want to know the secret? I use the baby-seat belt straps to hook ‘em together, and wrap this other big strap around the sides and there you go.”

To demonstrate, he positions a group of 12 carts single-file and begins to push. But as the line starts to roll, the leader hits a speed bump and the middle carts bulge out and begin to sway.

“We’re coming apart! I can’t hold it. . . . The line won’t hold!” he yells.

As other attendants rush to his aid, the 180-pound Wallace muscles the strays back into line and pulls them to a noisy stop.

He leans over to rest his head on the handle of the last cart and then he looks up and smiles.

“So, how’d you like that?”