BIDDERS ALL CAUGHT SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER AUCTION FOR CHARITY TAKES IN $500,000.

Byline: Carol Rock Staff Writer

VALENCIA - The inferno burned down the house to the tune of a cool half-million Saturday night.

Those in the crowd at the 34th annual Santa Clarita Valley Boys & Girls Club auction, with its ``Disco Inferno'' theme, opened their wallets to help the youth group raise more than $500,000.

The auction was held in the Valencia Commerce Center, where a decorated warehouse thumped with a beat and brought back memories of a time when everybody danced and men wore far too many gold chains. Video monitors throughout the room played ``Saturday Night Fever,'' the John Travolta movie that portrayed the disco era.

Nearly 1,700 people, many of them wearing platform shoes, Afro wigs and spangled disco attire, joined the party. More than 350 volunteers put the event together, soliciting auction items and decorations (including a head table that flashed in colored squares like a club's dance floor) and running bottles of champagne to the buyers lucky enough to have winning bids in the live auction.

Judy Belue, executive director of the Santa Clarita Valley Boys & Girls Club Foundation and the auction coordinator, said this year's auction broke records for both net income and attendance.

``It was just amazing,'' she said Monday, while the chaos of auction settlement went on around her in the club's Newhall headquarters.

Belue said the Heroes and High Hopes segment of the auction - in which the auctioneer paused halfway through the long list of items to give people an opportunity to pledge donations in increments from $100 to $5,000 - raised $40,000, nearly double last year's income of $25,000.

``This is just money people give out of the kindness of their hearts,'' she said. ``We had four people give at the $5,000 level. It was wonderful.''

Club board member Jack Wasserstein walked into the auction with a pedigreed golden retriever puppy, telling Belue he had heard organizers didn't have a puppy to auction.

``I thought he had just gotten a puppy for his family and was showing it off,'' she said. The puppy quickly captured the audience's attention until Wayne Crawford bought it for his wife, Diane, for $4,500.

Other items that brought in big dollars included the head table for the 2006 auction for $19,000; an Arabian horse garnering a $4,700 bid; a Six Flags coaster tour that went once for $8,000 until Del Holland, chief executive officer of Six Flags California, donated an additional package, which also went for $8,000; dinner with the Santa Clarita City Council, bought by developer Larry Rasmussen for $4,000; and barbecues at Councilman Bob Kellar's Sand Canyon ranch for $3,250 each.

After the exhausted auctioneer left the stage, dance instructor Reena Newhall took over and taught about 100 people - mostly volunteers and bidders giddy with success - how to dance the Hustle, a signature move of the disco decade.

Carol Rock, [phone]

carol.rock(at)dailynews.com