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	Vol.7, No 34, October 27, 1999
	Happiness found in L.B. By Don Weberg Daily Forty-Niner An unsolved mystery ended last week when Dalys "Hap" Heidt strolled into Shorehouse Café on Second Street and told a waitress he was lost. After a short conversation, the waitress, Cal State Long Beach student Fawn Foster, discovered Hap had been missing for more than five days. "He told me, 'I fell asleep in my car last night, and I'm lost,'" Foster said. When Foster asked the 76-year-old Hap where he was from, he simply said, "Anza," but could not recall where Anza was.  When Foster told him he was in Long Beach, Hap knew he was far from home.  "The whole time, he was standing there," Foster said. "He never sat down, so I thought to myself, OK, what do you do with a drunk guy? Give him coffee." After getting him some coffee, Foster learned that "Hap" was short for Happiness. For an hour and a half, Foster questioned Hap to help him find his way home. Hap had no phone numbers or maps, and his driver's license listed only a post office box number.  The situation looked bleak until Hap blurted out that he knew people in Long Beach.  "When he said that, I said, Oh, well, can you think of their numbers?  There's a pay phone outside, and it's a local call, so it will only be 35 cents,'" Foster said. A few minutes after going outside to use a pay phone, Hap came back inside and told Foster that he could not contact anyone, Foster said.  "I don't know if he even knows how to use a pay phone," Foster said. Foster handed him a slip of paper to write down the number, so she could place the call for him.  The number he wrote down had eight digits.  When she told him, he repeated another number, which did not match the written number. After attempting two versions of the number Hap wrote down, she called the one he verbalized. Mary Bender, a friend of Hap's for nearly 40 years, answered.  "It was wonderful [that Foster called]," Bender said. "He has the start of Alzheimer's and had been drinking [for days before]." Bender was so elated she came to the restaurant about 10 minutes later, picked up Hap and put some money in the parking meter for his truck.  What happened in those five days is a mystery.  It is thought that after having breakfast at a Veterans of Foreign Wars outpost in Anza, a small community in the desert near Palm Springs, Hap befriended someone who took advantage of his age, money and car.  "This other person drove his truck and they went to Oceanside and ended up in Belmont Shore," Bender said. According to Donna Schumacher, a friend at the mobile-home community where he lived in Anza, Hap's truck had considerably more miles than before and $700 worth of mechanical damage. "He scared the hell out of all of us," Schumacher said. "All of a sudden, he just vanished." Hap is now resting at the home of his sister, Norma, in Iowa.		Garth Milan/ Daily Forty-Niner Good Samaritan Fawn Foster, a CSULB student, serves up coffee at Shorehouse Cafe on Second Street in Long Beach.                                                                                   Happiness found in L.B.   College tuition lowered   Fine Arts buildings to be made over   Overseas scholarship awarded to CSULB student   Crime Log Death is part of war   Gun dealers senselessly targeted Fright Fest   Apollo Four Forty worth import price   Legendary band reunites for new release   Reality film features strong performances   Bizarre comedy film a hit Home schedule ends with defeat   Hockey team clubs its way to existence Fall 99 ISSUES DAILY 49ER HOMEPAGE
Forty-Niner Publications, Department of Journalism, California State University, Long Beach ©1999 All rights reserved.