Shoppers Rally to Aid of Cancer-Stricken Grocer

Customer Carl Weissenberg went down to the corner market Sunday--not to shop, but to help stock the shelves at Boccato’s Groceries.

“I don’t want Frank worrying about the store,” said Weissenberg, an airline employee. “I want him to know things are being taken care of.”

That’s the way things are these days at the tiny Hermosa Beach grocery store as owner Frank Boccato lies suffering from cancer.

Shoppers who for 28 years have been taken care of by Boccato are repaying his kindness by helping take care of him. Boccato’s little market is the heart and soul of their neighborhood, they say.

Want to catch up on the latest community news? You’d hear it at Boccato’s. Your teenager looking for his first job? Frank Boccato would hire him. A little short on cash? Boccato would let you shop now and pay later.

Boccato worked seven days a week at his market, keeping it well stocked with kind words and deeds along with the usual canned goods, fresh meats and bakery items.

He routinely slipped free fresh fruit into the shopping bags of local senior citizens he feared were not eating properly. When someone was ill he would send neighbors over with food, no charge.

So no wonder his customers were surprised when the 55-year-old Boccato failed to show up for work a few weeks ago.

Now they are delivering food to him and volunteering at his store.

“People are just devastated,” Hermosa Beach Mayor Robert Benz said Sunday. “Frank was a guy you could rely on. And many people did.”

Boccato made his mark quickly when he purchased a failing neighborhood market two blocks from the beach in 1970.

He began stocking it with a mixture of convenience foods that appealed to beach visitors and staples appreciated by local residents.

“He was wonderful,” 16-year customer Janet Hart recalled Sunday. “When my first child was born and I was working full time and I had a housekeeper who couldn’t drive, he would deliver my groceries to the house,” said Hart, an attorney.

His customers were like family to Boccato, a bachelor.

When local children were written up in the newspaper for athletic or academic achievements, Boccato always posted the articles on the wall for all to see. When the Olympic torch passed through Hermosa Beach in 1996, Boccato let young John Townsend and his rock band set up their instruments and play in his parking lot.

“Frank has been like a father to me. He’s helped me each and every time I needed it,” said Townsend, now 20 and an employee of the market for the past 3 1/2 years.

Chuck Dooley, a Hermosa Beach repairman, said that as many as a thousand youngsters have gotten their first job with Boccato.

“Frank once said he’d never accomplished anything, that he had never gone to college. I told him to think about the kids he’s helped. All of these kids got their first taste of what the work world is like, and they got it from a kindhearted boss, not some mean guy.”

Over the years the store evolved into something of a community center for the north end of town.

“This is the place you come to catch up on the news,” said Rose McIntosh, a retired flight attendant who has lived in Hermosa Beach for 20 years. “You come in and somebody says, ‘Hey, did you hear so-and-so’s sick?’ ”

When Boccato became ill with pancreatic cancer, employees signed a get-well card for him. But before they could send it off, more than 200 customers had added their names.

Many of them visited Boccato when he was initially hospitalized in Santa Monica. They were hopeful when Boccato returned to work, his chemotherapy containers clipped to his belt.

These days he is at home. On Sunday he was described as too weak to talk.

“He probably wouldn’t want to anyway,” said longtime store employee Gil Horcher, who is running the market in Boccato’s absence. “Frank doesn’t like the limelight.”

Horcher and other store employees said they are uncertain what the future holds for the store, although they are hopeful others in the Boccato family will continue running it. Brother John Boccato operates a wine-and-cheese shop in the Larchmont area of Los Angeles and other family members are involved with a liquor store in Manhattan Beach.

Horcher said the only photograph anyone has of Boccato has been loaned to a faith healer. “We wanted to try everything,” he said.

One of the store’s customers is trying to arrange a prayer vigil at the beach for Boccato.

“She feels strongly there’s power if a lot of people get together,” Horcher said.

Libby Moreno delivered chicken soup to Boccato at his mid-Los Angeles home. Moreno recalled that three years ago her mother died and Boccato refused to accept $300 for the food she ordered to serve after the funeral.

Moreno’s chicken soup trip ended with hugs.

“I said, ‘Frank, you’ll be fine,’ ” she said. “He said, ‘Yes, yes,’ and got choked up.”