A Ticket for Help

The City of Hope does it. The Democrats do it. UCLA academic benefactors do it.

So when Kendall Severson needed money for a cause dear to her heart, she cooked up plans for a benefit dinner, too.

She talked a chef into donating the use of his restaurant. Talked a band into providing entertainment. Talked local merchants into donating raffle prizes. Talked an artist into designing invitations. Talked a copy shop into printing them.

And now Severson, 34, is trying to talk perfect strangers into buying $100-a-plate tickets she hopes will pay for a new van for her disabled mother.

Severson, 34, is a relentless, passionate talker. “This is a barn-raising, L.A.-style,” she says. “When people ask me why I’m doing it, I ask them how could I not do it?”

Monday night’s fund-raiser is called “Driving Ms. Ruth-Elaine.” Proceeds will go toward buying a van with an hydraulic lift for Ruth-Elaine Giliberti, who has multiple sclerosis and relies on an electric scooter to maneuver around the house.

Giliberti, 61, is a former actress who worked on such TV shows as 1960’s “Surfside 6.” She was found to have the neurological disease in 1968 and since then has gradually lost the use of her legs.

Severson is a restaurant consultant from Marina del Rey. She’s borrowing ideas for her $100-a-plate affair from professional money-raisers who long ago turned the ubiquitous benefit dinner into a staple of Los Angeles’ society supper set.

She decided to get a van for her mother after a Thanksgiving visit to her parents’ Palm Springs home. Although she had watched her mother grow increasingly frail over the years, Severson said she was shocked to find Giliberti immobile--and her 63-year-old father, Eduardo, struggling to lift her between her wheelchair and the car.

“When I physically put her legs in the car, I thought, ‘This is it. This woman’s going to be a shut-in,’ ” Severson said. “It was a crisis. I’d seen vans, but I knew I couldn’t afford to buy one for her. I had to do something.”

Severson talked to a friend, Tiffany Harris of Glendale, who had been involved in a fund-raiser a year earlier for a woman who lost her legs when she was hit by a car. Harris gave Severson copies of announcements, invitations and press releases that had been used for that event.

Severson plunged right in. She called the owner of Emi Restaurant in Hollywood and asked if she could hold a dinner there. “My knees were shaking. I felt real sheepish. I told him the benefit was for my mom--she has MS and needs a van. He looked at me and said, ‘Of course you can do it here.’ ”

Emi’s Enrico Glaudo said he was impressed, not turned off, by the mother-daughter charity request. “I’d do the same thing for my family,” he said the other day.

Severson set out next to find entertainment for the dinner. She realized, she said, that people would expect something other than lasagna Bolognese for their $100.

She called the leader of a band she’d heard play in Santa Monica--and Danny Weis of Inglewood quickly agreed to perform. She contacted an artist whose funky-looking painted shoes had caught her eye in a Palm Springs coffee shop--and Robert Fischer immediately promised to send a trailer-load of his unusual work for display at the dinner.

Silver Lake waiter Francis Lee volunteered the help of his wife, graphic artist Shannon Lee, to design invitations and advertising posters for Severson. Manhattan Beach copy shop operators Jim Hess and Don Winfrey agreed to donate the printing.

Marina del Rey neighbor Ed Burzminski offered Severson the use of his own company’s bulk mailing permit. Venice resident Susan Coleman began assembling a 750-name mailing list on her computer.

A dozen friends began meeting weekly at Severson’s apartment to help her and husband, Corbin Severson, stuff envelopes, come up with names of people to invite and solicit gifts to be raffled off.

Because Severson is not connected with a charity, no city permit is needed for her fund-raiser, according to Los Angeles officials. But because the dinner lacks a nonprofit designation from the state, tickets are not tax-deductible.

Severson is hoping that 200 people come to the dinner. By Wednesday afternoon, 95 reservations had been made.

She acknowledged that it isn’t easy approaching strangers and asking them to come to a $100-per-plate dinner. “People think it’s the oddest thing,” she said.

If the fund-raiser comes up a little short, Severson already knows whom she’ll approach next.

“I’ll go to a van dealership,” she said. “And talk with them about getting involved.”