DIANE BELL
grateful.”
The former J.C. Penney department store salesman knows how to shop for bargains, especially seasonal clothing sales. He scouts close-out offers, special deals and redeems coupons.
Last March, for instance, Olsen purchased 80 jackets that retailed for $120 each at a special sale price of $6.88 each. He bought a $295 sportscoat at Macy’s, using a coupon, for $4.98. He also snapped up dozens of kids’ jackets at Macy’s for $15.99 each.
This year he says he spent about $3,000 out of pocket but was able to purchase items with an estimated retail value of $19,000. “That’s the only way I can afford to help a lot of people,” he explains.
Olsen, in fact, first started collecting toys to give away to kids when he was in his mid-20s and was adept at using a mechanical claw game machine to pick up stuffed animals.
So prodigious is his gift giving that Olsen had to find extra storage space, so he bought a 12-foot-by-16-foot shed to house his giveaways to await the holidays. He keeps the numbers in his head. This year’s items — clothing, food and toys — should reach 888 people, and over the past 32 years he estimates the total number of recipients at 53,184.
Nowadays he buys primarily via computer. “Shopping is a lot easier than it was before, when I had to go into
the stores,” Olsen says. The pandemic keeps him from joining this year’s festivities, but it hasn’t dampened his giving spirit. “I’m probably going to continue,” he says of future years.
Times Square fame: A
“Who’s Who” collage of movie stars, models and musicians long have been illuminated in Times Square with enough lights to power all of Las Vegas’ casinos twice over.
And now comes 13-yearold Addison Levy of Ramona.
She had her Dec. 5 debut on a video billboard in the famous Big Apple tourist magnet that attracted an average of 136,000 people a day in pre-COVID times.
Not bad for a gal who attends a local charter school, rides horses and creates fantasy scenarios with her miniature barns and plastic toy horses.
In fact, it is those horses that got her face up in Times Square. Addison created an imaginary scenario using her Schleich mini-animal collection — an equine comedy club gathering — which she videotaped, complete with horse jokes. Her video was selected from more than 5,000 submissions, first in the top 10, and then as one of three winners in the Schleich USA contest.
In pre-COVID times, Addison and her co-winners, a 7-year-old boy from Missouri and a 7-year-old girl from Maryland, would have visited New York City for the ceremony.
Instead Schleich hosted a virtual viewing party emceed by Patti Murin, who originated the role of Anna in Disney’s “Frozen” on Broadway. It also hired professional L.A. cameraman Mitchel Wu to photograph the scenarios.
Addison says she was surprised to have been chosen and delighted when Schleich sent her a bunch of horses and animals to add to her collection, which already numbered about 70. After all, a young equestrian can never have too many horses.