VALLEY'S WILLIE WONKA GIVES BACK.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

They would meet clandestinely a couple of times a week, in gas stations throughout the Valley, during the mid-1980s - and Gloria and Mel Sheftel would put $10 worth of gas in Frank's car, never any money in his hand.

After that, they'd take their 24-year-old son, who was living in that car, to a restaurant to feed him - never handing him the money to buy his own dinner.

``The money would have gone elsewhere, we knew that,'' Gloria says. ``It would have gone for drugs.''

It's a tough thing for a mother to say, but Gloria says it candidly and honestly because she and her husband know they are lucky people today.

Their son turned it around. Today, he runs a successful North Hollywood business on Magnolia Boulevard called the Candy Factory, which makes custom candies and hosts birthday parties for kids.

How 40-year-old Frank Sheftel went from being a homeless man living out of his car in the '80s to the Willie Wonka of the Valley is one of those great stories that offers hope to a parents who may be facing the same thing the Sheftels faced 16 years ago - a lot of heartbreak and anxiety.

``I had many visions going through my brain of how things were going to turn out for my son,'' Gloria said Monday. ``None of them was that he would be OK.

``We owe the Chabad people so much. They did a mitzvah (good deed) not only for Frank but for us.''

< He had been living on the streets one step ahead of the cops, hanging out with the wrong people in the wrong crowd, Frank says.

``You know how they say you have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired before you'll change?'' he asks. ``That was me.''

A family friend told him about a nondenominational, transitional living and drug rehabilitation program for homeless men run by the Hasidic Jewish organization Chabad.

Frank walked in its front door one day and met Sue Oppenheimer, the program's director.

``He had hit bottom and was ready,'' said Oppenheimer, an Encino psychotherapist in private practice today.

``Our main purpose was to help guys who had fallen through the cracks,'' she said. ``We worked out of an old frat house, and I can honestly say it was the best residential therapy program I was ever part of.''

Six months later, Frank was clean and working part time in a candy shop in Westwood. A few months later, he had an apartment in the Valley and was reuniting with his grateful and relieved parents who didn't have to meet him clandestinely in gas stations anymore.

``They were my biggest supporters and helped me buy this business and become a real-life Willie Wonka,'' Frank said Monday while preparing for a TV telethon this weekend to raise funds for Chabad's educational programs for children, senior citizens, drug addicts and the homeless.

Most people wouldn't air their dirty laundry in public like this, Frank says, but the way the Sheftels see it, he would be dead right now if not for Chabad.

``Frank is one of our great success stories - and supporters,'' said Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, director of Chabad's headquarters on the West Coast. ``There are so many men who have turned their lives around in our programs.

``Last week, I was at an event and a young fellow came over to me with a beautiful baby in his arms. He told me the baby was in this world only because of us, that we had given him his life back seven years ago when he went through our program.

``He had met a young lady who was one of our telephone operators at the telethon, married her and now they have two beautiful kids,'' Cunin said.

The Chabad telethon will air on Sunday from 5 p.m. to midnight on KCOP-TV (Channel 13).

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Photo:

Candy Factory owner Frank Sheftel, who credits a Hasidic Jewish organization for 10 years ago turning his life around, helps raise funds for Chabad's programs.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer