When cancer threatened Christmas, this teacher’s students stepped in to help
Eli Hallak’s wife, Patrice, jokes that his obsession with going all out each year to decorate their home for Christmas is a kind of sickness.
Hallak, the veteran teacher and head athletic trainer at St. Francis High School in La Cañada Flintridge, sees it differently.
For him, the elaborate scene of 68,000 lights synchronized to music, a mini-train, two 8-foot-tall teddy bears, and a snow-blowing snowman — among other characters — is his way of giving back to the community.