She Makes Sure We All Get the Bouquet

The maps and cell phones are ready this time. The trial run was uneventful. With a Korean War veteran as a guide and some luck, the mission to make six middle-of-the-night drops should go off without a hitch.

This time, no one should have to scale fences and maybe none of the 25 intrepid volunteers will even hear gunfire.

Susan Lord never counted on any of that the first time she tried to deliver flowers.

“This year, it’s so organized it’s scary,” she said.

Two years ago, Lord was a guest at Las Floristas Floral Headdress Ball, a charity event for disabled children that features hundreds of floral centerpieces and headdresses. But she was stunned to find out the expensive flowers were tossed out afterward.

So last year she and some friends volunteered to distribute the flowers to AIDS hospices, Veterans Administration hospitals and a home for abused girls.

After loading the flowers in their vehicles at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Lord--the owner of a silver exporting company in Chatsworth--took the wheel of a lumbering rental truck at about 1 a.m. Unsure of how to work the gears, Lord made the truck lurch and stall through the dark, empty Los Angeles streets.

“We were just lucky it was in the middle of the night,” Lord said.

Once they got to the right addresses, they ran into a different set of problems. “It never occurred to anyone to ask where the service entrances were,” Lord admitted.

Some of the places were not expecting deliveries. That meant, for instance, that one group member--an 18-year-old woman--had to scale a fence to knock on a locked door at a Salvation Army hospice near downtown Los Angeles.

At about 4 a.m., the group finally reached the address of an AIDS hospice, only to discover it had closed a week earlier.

Then there was the gunfire.

“We heard random shots, jumped in the car and left,” said Lord, a native of Alaska who is married to a producer at NBC News.

The gunfire was not directed at them and was “not real close, but loud enough,” Lord said.

After this year’s ball Friday, Lord expects deliveries to take only a couple of hours.

“It should go smoother,” said Jack Farley, a Korean War Army veteran who is a salesman for Lord’s company. He is also the map maker for this year’s mission.

But delivering the flowers in the middle of the night means not seeing the reactions of the recipients.

Last year, on their final stop--the Florence Crittenton Center, a Los Angeles residential treatment facility for abused girls--Lord and the caravan arrived exhausted after a night of deliveries.

“We were all very fractured,” Lord said.

But the teenage girls were already awake by then.

“They couldn’t believe it,” said Dr. Ellen Goudlock, another Lord friend in the caravan. “They kept saying, ‘Flowers for us? Why are we getting flowers?’ ”

But even Farley, a sergeant wounded in combat, understands how important something as simple as flowers can be.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Army hospitals,” he said. “Anything means a lot to you when you’re in the hospital.”

Personal Best is a weekly profile of an ordinary person who does extraordinary things. Please send suggestions on prospective candidates to Personal Best, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Or fax them to (818) 772-3338. Or e-mail them to valley@latimes.com.