Secret Santa Visits The Big Apple

NEW YORK -- After a few somber minutes watching workers remove debris at ground zero, Kansas City's Secret Santa strolled into a historic lower Manhattan church Wednesday and asked how to make a donation.

Letters, banners and schoolchildren's notes from across the country plastered every wall and pew inside St. Paul's Chapel.

In September, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called the chapel a miracle because it didn't lose as much as a window when the World Trade Center complex collapsed across the street. Open around the clock, it provides about 2,000 meals a day to relief workers.

Santa reached into his vest pocket and began counting $100 bills. When he finished, $5,000 lay on a counter in the sacristy.

"Oh my gosh!" the Rev. Lyndon Harris exclaimed as he clutched his hand over his chest. "It's Christmas at ground zero!"

The unusually large cash donation will feed workers for about two days, Harris said. Next week, volunteers from an Overland Park church will help serve some food.

Secret Santa is an anonymous Jackson County businessman who for more than two decades has celebrated Christmas by handing out $100 bills. In the past, he has done that in the Kansas City area.

Like thousands of Americans, Santa felt tugged to help the Big Apple this holiday season because of what happened three months ago. New Yorkers will receive about half of the tens of thousands of dollars he will give away this Christmas season. Kansas Citians will receive the rest.

Today, he will visit a mid-Manhattan social service agency that has received three shipments of toys and other supplies from Heart to Heart International in Olathe. People who lost their jobs after Sept. 11 shop for free Christmas gifts at the agency.

Riding around Manhattan on Wednesday, Santa scanned streets and stores for the downtrodden. The homeless were a prime target, but he also wanted to find low-wage workers and those who lost their jobs after the towers fell.

It was hard work. New Yorkers aren't used to Secret Santa. No one gives out $100 bills in Manhattan. If they do, it must be a David Letterman prank, right? Or counterfeit money. But certainly not a man spreading holiday cheer. No way.

"Here," one recipient, a woman wearing red, said to a police officer standing on a street corner. "Some guy gave me this. It must be fake."

Because he was in New York, Santa drew inspiration from a classic movie and went to 34th Street. Near the Macy's department store at Seventh Avenue, he created two miracles of his own. The first made someone a believer. The second involved a report of $5 million found in a trash can.

Both occurred just after dark Tuesday in the heart of Manhattan's ritzy shopping district.

James Fraizer, a 19-year-old security guard from Harlem, was watching throngs of New Yorkers bustle past Macy's when a rotund stranger approached.

"I was told to come see you," Secret Santa said as he reached into a vest pocket and pulled out a crisp $100 bill. He slipped the money into Fraizer's hand, blurted "Merry Christmas!" and dashed into the chilly Manhattan night.

"Why are you giving me this?" Fraizer asked as he fingered the folded bill. He looked up for an answer, but the red-shirted stranger had vanished.

Fraizer said he'd stopped believing in Santa Claus after he turned 10. Now, he felt that maybe, just maybe, he was wrong to have quit believing.

Minutes later, Fraizer spotted the stranger returning. Fraizer grabbed two cookies from a nearby Salvation Army bell ringer and rushed after him. Santa smiled and accepted the goodies with a nod of appreciation.

"You're supposed to give Santa milk and cookies," Fraizer said, "but I didn't have any milk."

Down the street, two maintenance workers in white uniforms wore grins of satisfaction. Santa had just visited them, too. He had reached into a tall blue trash can they were pulling around and exclaimed: "How in the world did you possibly miss that! You'd better be more careful."

Each shocked worker received $100. Adrian Camacho, a 62-year-old from the Bronx, said it took him 11 years on the job to reach $11.48 in hourly wages.

Word had spread that two men found money in the trash. Santa retreated a block to watch the reactions. A man walked by with a stunned expression.

Outside a Port Authority transit terminal, Santa spotted Tony Franks-el, 34, from the Bronx, walking with two bags in his hands.

"You dropped this," Santa said, sliding him a folded bill. Franks-el's mouth fell open. It had to be a joke, he thought, but he could use the money.

Inside the cavernous Port Authority terminal, Santa's eyes scanned right, then left, looking for needy people. Just then, a man from Alabama walked up to one of Santa's escorts, Officer Bruce Arch from Manhattan's 17th precinct.

He'd just been released from a New Jersey hospital and lacked money to return to Alabama. Arch grinned. What timing. He turned toward Santa, who gave the man from Alabama $300.

Arch, who worked 12-hour shifts for nearly six weeks after the terrorist attacks, hadn't seen anything like it.

"I think it's great he is doing this for New York," he said. "We could really use it. ... I'll never forget this."

Santa's New York adventure turned serious Wednesday morning, when an "elf" from Kansas City accompanied him near ground zero. The elf, Capt. Ray Wynn, works out of Kansas City Fire Station No. 18.

Escorted by two representatives from the New York Senate, Santa and Wynn walked onto a wooden platform where thousands of others had scribbled messages.

Santa reverently removed his New York Police Department ball cap, which he had bought three years earlier from a street vendor near the trade center. Silently, he stared down from the platform overlooking the debris field.

Cranes and other large machinery grunted as they picked at the twisted metal, wood and other material. Once four stories high, the rubble now rests mostly below street level.

When the terrorists attacked, Santa said, he'd felt dazed. The idea of helping New Yorkers struck him four days later. He hesitated because he felt nervous -- not about flying, but about how he would react to seeing a New York skyline no longer dominated by majestic twin towers.

After stopping at St. Paul's, Santa walked streets near ground zero, distributing cash to people who had been without work after the attack. People in clothing stores, shoe repair shops and others on the street thanked him.

Outside, a memorial honored 14 of its firefighters who had died at the trade center. Santa read the names and the banners and looked at the wreaths and the flowers.

He went inside the firehouse and left $1,000 for the New York Police and Fire Widows and Children's fund.

To reach Donna McGuire, call (816) 234-4393 or send e-mail to dmcguire@kcstar.com.

Santa returned to K.C. and made his rounds there, too.

Secret Santa delivers Christmas cash around KC area

By DONNA McGUIRE - The Kansas City Star
Date: 12/22/01 22:15

Carrie Turner jumped up and down, whirled, pumped her arms in the air and screamed "Thank you, Jesus!" over and over Saturday morning. Then she clutched her chest, sat down and cried.

A stranger driving a red sleigh -- uh, a red van -- had handed her and her daughter each $100 out his window as they waited for a bus downtown.

"I'm on fixed income and I really didn't have anything," said Turner, a Kansas City resident. "He was a blessing come true."

A blessing, a guardian angel, the hundred-dollar-bill man. Stunned people called him those names and more Saturday.

A few even realized he was Secret Santa, the anonymous Jackson County millionaire who has distributed $100 bills each Yuletide for more than 20 years. It's his Christmas present to himself, a way to repeat the kindness of a Mississippi diner owner who helped Santa 30 years ago.

Fresh from three days spent distributing $25,000 in New York, Santa trolled the streets of Kansas City and its suburbs Friday and Saturday searching for more "targets" -- people who looked like they needed extra money.

He found them washing laundry, scouring parking lots for dropped change, shopping in a thrift store and toiling behind counters at diners.

Maria Garcia of Independence was folding clothes at an Independence laundry with her boyfriend, David Waters, when Santa swooped in and handed each $200. Garcia raced after him to shake his hand.

"You just made my day," she said.

They had collected their pennies -- literally, Garcia said -- to have enough money for laundry.

At the Town Topic diner on Broadway, Santa left $100 apiece for the five employees. Bonnie Gooch stood speechless. Her chin quivered.

"My husband's got cancer," Gooch whispered as tears bubbled from her eyes. "I need it real bad. He sure was my angel."

At a Sonic Drive-In in Independence, Santa told carhop Natalie Hotson, 16, to keep the change from $100. Then he handed her a Ben Franklin for each of her co-workers. Hotson raced inside waving the money.

"You guys!" she yelled. "A guy just came and gave us $700." <

Her co-workers whooped and cheered.

"I didn't have any money for Christmas shopping," said Andy Ayala, 17. "Tell him thank you."

At one intersection, Santa handed $100 to a woman driving a beat-up four-door sedan. She sobbed. At a Waffle House, he left $1,000 for a Blue Springs couple whose 9-year-old daughter died a week ago. At a thrift store, he created a stir when he distributed hundreds of dollars to shoppers.

"Isn't that something!" said Brenda S. Parmly of Blue Springs, a widow on a fixed income who was looking for clothes. "And I was really desperate. I was worrying about how I was going to have Christmas."

Dashing through Kansas City streets was much easier than dashing through New York, Santa said. Kansas Citians seem more accepting and less wary that the cash might be a prank. And it was easier to make a clean getaway.

Friday, Santa donned a fake beard and Santa hat to meet two families that had survived recent fire tragedies. Inside a fire station at 4928 Main St.,

he gave each of them certificates honoring them as "John Tvedten angels," in honor of the Kansas City battalion chief who died fighting a warehouse fire two years ago.

He also gave each family $2,500.

"Now maybe she can buy a headstone," Paula Russell said as she watched recipient Shannon DeLapp react to Santa's gift. DeLapp hugged her daughter as she stood speechless, surrounded by quiet firefighters. Her two sons, ages 5 and 3, died in a fire last July while Russell was baby-sitting them.

After Santa surprised DeLapp, the firefighters surprised him. They slipped him a specially painted fire helmet with a white shield on the front that said "Tvedten Angel." A firefighter designed it.

Santa melted.

"Awww," said former Negro Leagues baseball star Buck O'Neil, who played Santa's elf for the day. "You made Santa cry."

For once, it was his turn.

Secret Santa can be reached at secretsanta1971@aol.com.

To reach Donna McGuire, general assignment reporter, call (816) 234-4393 or send e-mail to dmcguire@kcstar.com.

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