New Year’s Eve Workers Greet an Anticlimactic Dawn

It was the biggest party of the century.

But for legions of Ventura County workers, the historic transition to 2000 was punctuated by a punch of the time card and not the clink of a champagne glass.

Hundreds of police officers rang in the new year stationed in patrol cars or at command posts, waiting for doomsday scenarios that never materialized.

Emergency room nurses and doctors, who had also prepared for the worst, watched an anticlimactic dawn of the new century from their hospital posts.

And scores of waiters, bartenders and company employees forced to work the New Year’s Eve night shift watched the clock turn over with an eye toward going home.

“You’re just as well off working New Year’s Eve,” said bartender Chip Smith, who didn’t mind pouring cocktails at the swank Tower Club party in Oxnard because of the potential for big tips.

“I worked 17 of them and then I took it off two years ago,” Smith said. “It was all right. But it gets built up into something it isn’t.”

Tell that to Lesley Lang. She wasn’t working, but her husband was and Lang decided to tag along. She sat at the Tower Club bar while T.C. Tahoe performed a comedy and magic show for 150 guests.

“I’m from Scotland and this is a big holiday in my country,” said Lang, sipping a gin and tonic. “We were hoping to be home in Burbank by midnight, but I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

In Ventura, pyrotechnist Don Howard forfeited his own New Year’s Eve plans to set off the fireworks for a millennial bash at the Ventura County Fairgrounds.

“I’m just glad they decided to have a show,” he said. “I’m in my realm here.”

When midnight chimed at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, only those on the time clock remained. Although 900 people had packed the house for a performance by the Conejo Pops Orchestra, most in attendance headed home before midnight to ring in the new year.

That left only a handful of theater staff members sitting around the box office munching on cake when the calendar turned to 2000.

“Because we’re here, we might as well make the best of it,” said Mary Ann Tachco, supervisor of the city’s theater department. “If you have to work on New Year’s Eve, why not make the best of it?”

At one point, not long before midnight, Santa Paula’s Main Street was empty, except for three black-and-white police cruisers. About the only person around was white-haired Gloria Nava, who was finishing her cleaning work at Santa Clara Valley Bank with a vacuum before bolting for home.

“I’m doing it now, so I don’t have to come back tomorrow, so I can celebrate tomorrow,” she said about 11 p.m. “My kids are adults and they’ve all gone their own ways. But at 11:30 I’m out of here. I’ll be with my grandson and my daughter and my husband for midnight.”

Some professionals in the medical and law enforcement fields felt a duty--even a thrill--about working on a night when there was the potential for computer glitches, power failures or civil unrest.

“I was kind of looking forward to working,” Sgt. Tom Chronister of the Oxnard Police Department said. “I really didn’t want to go to some party. This is supposed to be an exciting night and if something happens I’d hate to miss it because I had the night off.”

Chronister’s wife, a dispatcher for the Ventura County Fire Department, was also working through the midnight hour. “I told her, “Babe, I’m working, so you might as well too.’ ”

Y2K worries put a damper on many couple’s plans this year.

Carol Askren, assistant director of nursing at Santa Paula Hospital, signed up to run the emergency room night shift because her husband, Fillmore Fire Chief Pat Askren, had to work.

“This was my own choice,” Askren said. “My husband was working at the [command post] in Fillmore so we wouldn’t be together anyway.”

Oxnard Police Sgt. Marty Meyer has worked every New Year’s Eve for the past 15 years. So welcoming the new year, even if a new millennium, from the second floor of the Oxnard Police Department was old hat.

Even his wife didn’t question where he would be ringing in the new year.

“She’s used to it,” Meyer said. “It’s the same thing with Christmas. She knows the deal.”

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Times staff writers Daryl Kelley, Catherine Saillant, Anna Gorman and Tina Dirmann contributed to this story. Times Community News writer Josh Karp also contributed.