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LOS ANGELES - Downtown's Skid Row can be a scary place -- even on Christmas Day -- but not for a 91-year-old man with a $20,000 bank roll.
The Rev. Maurice Chase, a retired Catholic priest and former right-hand man to president of Loyola Marymount University, has been making hand-to-hand cash grants for more than 30 years, thanks to his benefactors, including a big-name entertainers such as Bob Hope, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra and their widows.
Chase, known on the streets as "Father Dollar Bill," used to hand out only $1 bills, but he now sometimes slips a $100 dollar bill to those he thinks it will help.
"It's a one-man show, kind of," he said. "There's really no middleman."
He said he recently got a nice letter from Cardinal Roger Mahony, thanking him for his work on behalf or the poor and dispossessed.
Starting about 8 a.m., Chase was scheduled to be in front the Fred Jordan Mission at Fifth and Towne streets, shaking hands, making a small talk and helping brighten Christmas Day for some of the city's most downtrodden.
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