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He was a waiter at a Napa Valley restaurant in need of a fair weather Santa for an employee Christmas party. No one else on staff could be coaxed to plop the children of chefs and food runners onto his lap. But Proctor figured what the heck.

It was uncomfortably hot underneath the scraggly, false beard and fur-trimmed velvet rental suit. It was also strangely transformative.

“It’s kids experiencing magic and there’s not a lot of magic in the world,” said Proctor, a 70-year-old Army veteran who moved from his native California to a subsidized apartment in Lahaina in 2011. “That magic rubs off on you.”

Proctor reprised the role of Old Saint Nick for several more years, adding private parties and hotel gigs to his repertoire. Then he decided to ditch the rental suit. Buying up yards of velvet, fur and silk, he handed the materials off to his daughter, who sewed the custom suit he would wear for the next 23 years.

One Fourth of July weekend, Proctor further sealed his commitment: He stopped shaving his beard. By the time he relocated to Lahaina to ride out his sunset years, he was a real-bearded Santa Claus with a $125 insurance liability policy for handling babies.

“I suffer with a little bit of depression and it always gets to me around Christmas,” he said. “But being Santa always helps me because you can’t be depressed when you’re Santa. When you put on the suit, it changes you.”

On Maui, Proctor discovered the business of Santa Claus could be lucrative. He took the starring role on a series of catamaran boat cruises out of Maalaea Harbor. He morphed into tropical Santa for photo ops with children at the Shops at Wailea. On Christmas morning, he landed in a double-hulled canoe powered by eight paddlers at the beach fronting The Westin resort. He also busied himself with an array of private parties and corporate gigs. Apart from the occasional charitable church gig, Proctor set his rate at $150 an hour.

In the sprint between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Proctor usually earns $9,000, a sum that supplements his year-round Social Security payments.

“I tell people you don’t pay me to be Santa, you pay me to wear this beard on Maui in July and August when I’m trying to play golf and I’m trying to putt and sweat is literally dripping out of my beard,” Proctor said. “It’s like having a cat on your face.”

This year was supposed to be Proctor’s last playing Santa. He longed for his own family Christmas, something he’d had to forgo since assuming the role of Kris Kringle so many years ago.

Then, on Aug. 8, a fast-moving blaze set the heart of Lahaina on fire. The deadliest American wildfire in more than a century incinerated Proctor’s one-bedroom unit at the Front Street Apartments, along with his car and most of his belongings, including his bespoke Santa suit.

The months since have been nightmarish for Proctor, who spent weeks sleeping on an air mattress at the War Memorial gymnasium in Wailuku before FEMA moved him to a room at the Royal Lahaina Resort, which has become a temporary home to hundreds of displaced Lahaina residents while it undergoes noisy renovation work. His search for a more permanent home on Maui has not been successful. In Lahaina, he paid a subsidized monthly rent of $1,175. The cheapest rent he’s seen for a one-bedroom is $2,200 — a rate far outside his retirement budget.

Proctor doesn’t know where he’ll live when the federal government’s emergency shelter program expires in March or if he’ll be able to stay on Maui. But in October, when his phone started ringing with requests for Santa bookings, he decided he wasn’t ready to hang up the fabled role yet. He went on Amazon and ordered a red suit, boots, gloves, eyeglasses and jingle bells.

When he dons the costume, despite so many losses this year, he can’t be sad.

“This is the most important year of all of them,” he said.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by grants from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.