‘Prisoners’ Raise Bail for Good Cause

Living a life free of larceny isn’t difficult when you’re a nun, but the long arm of the law finally caught up with Sister Eva Bryan on Tuesday and took her to jail.

Her crime? Charity.

The school principal was participating in a fund-raiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Assn. that required its donors to spend time in a mock cell at a Canoga Park car dealership. A few blocks away, students at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church spent the time raising her “bail.”

“They’re collecting it all up to get me back,” she said from inside the jail, an airy chamber made of plastic pipe and crepe paper.

Next to her, electrical contractor Ron Schain was 90 minutes into his sentence and had already raised $250 in pledges from members of his church.

“I’m only on the Fs, so I’ve got through Z to go,” he said between calls on a cell phone provided for the prisoners’ use.

Jana Feifer, program coordinator for the Muscular Dystrophy Assn.’s Encino district, which serves the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, said the goal was to raise between $15,000 and $20,000. Money collected at the monthly events will be used to pay for research at clinics across the country.

Representing the law were two officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division, Dan Mastro and Joel Price, who posed for photos with each of the prisoners and made sure no one escaped without making bail. “I thought it was such a great event and cause that I opted to spend my off time here,” Mastro said.

Nisan Cerami thought she’d be spending her hour in an actual jail but said she was happy to help the association in any way she could. Like Schain, she spent her time working the phones to gather pledges, leaving messages saying only that she was in jail and needed help when she got an answering machine.

“I figure that’s a guarantee they’ll call back,” she joked.