Lost Claus

Santa Claus has been kidnapped from a Hermosa Beach Christmas tree lot.

This particular Santa is about 6 feet tall and mechanized. He sports a jolly red hat, shiny blue eyes and a curly white beard. He used to wave to motorists on Pacific Coast Highway and sing “Jingle Bells” for tots on the lot.

But now he’s gone, stolen a few days back, removed to parts unknown.

Mary Ann Dib, 56, who runs the lot and is a veteran of 30 years in the Christmas tree business, can hardly believe it.

“He made my 22 grandchildren so happy,” she said. “They don’t know he’s gone. The little ones keep asking, ‘Where’s Santa, Grandma?’ I keep saying, ‘He’s up there making toys.’ ”

She uttered a rueful sigh: “ ‘Tis the season.”

Dib said she bought the life-size doll from a Sylmar shop for $500. For the past four holiday seasons, Santa had greeted shoppers at the lot on PCH between 1st and 2nd streets. He vanished, she said, between 10:30 p.m. Dec. 3 and 8 a.m. Dec. 4.

“I left, and he was here,” she said. “I came back, and he was gone.”

The watchman she had hired to watch the lot overnight, she said, had fallen asleep. “He said he was a light sleeper,” she remarked, adding that she’s now looking for a new watchman.

Dib said she called Hermosa Beach police but did not file a report. An officer came to the lot, she said, and advised her to call the newspaper. Hermosa Beach police did not return calls seeking comment.

Meanwhile, Dib said, regular customers are taking the doll’s disappearance hard.

“One woman came on the lot--she comes here every year--she was so devastated she started crying,” Dib said.

To compensate for the loss of the doll, Dib has hired a man to dress up in a Santa suit and play the trumpet. But he works only part time. And unlike the doll, he gets paid for his efforts.

Dib hired the trumpet-playing man because he was walking down PCH and handed her a red-and-gray card that read, “Kooks for Christ.” And, she said, he “looked like he needed a job.”

He “knows all the Christmas carols,” she said, and it turns out he can twist a balloon into the shape of a reindeer, and that “makes the children happy.” He may yet become the night watchman, she said.

But, she said, she so misses her big Santa. In hopes of solving the crime, she said she’s been dabbling in detective work--pondering the logistics of pulling off such a heist.

Whoever stole Santa would have needed a pickup truck to cart him away, she said.

Dib said she’s offering a $100 reward for Santa’s return, no questions asked. “Who would feel happy to have a Santa Claus in their home knowing it was stolen?” she said.