Irish Lass in Clover Thanks to a Sly Dig

Her Irish eyes were smiling.

Then Moya O’Loughlin-Sinclair Saturday spied the man with the lawn mower bearing down on her secret patch of St. Patrick’s Day shamrock growing alongside busy Van Nuys Boulevard.

The 80-year-old woman had noticed the clover sprouting weeks ago behind the bus stop bench down the street from her tiny Panorama City retirement apartment.

Until 10 years ago, friends in her native Ireland had remembered to mail her bunches of genuine Irish shamrock plucked from the rocky heath of County Wexford each year for St. Patrick’s Day. This time, a homesick O’Loughlin-Sinclair counted on being able to harvest her own clover clump on Monday, as part of the traditional celebration of St. Patrick’s legendary ouster of snakes from Eire.

But a Saturday morning television weather report forecast stormy weather to continue through Monday. So she collected the gardening tools she uses for her apartment’s potted plants and headed for the bus stop.

“I went out before breakfast. I didn’t think it wise to wait,” she said. “When I saw the man mowing next to the sidewalk, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, my shamrock is gone.’ ”

The luck of the Irish held, however.

“When I got to the bench, the shamrock was still there,” she said. “I got down on my knees with my little shovel and dug it up before the man with the mower could get to it. I’m sure he must have wondered what the crazy old lady was doing.”

O’Loughlin-Sinclair hurried back to her apartment and sprayed the delicate clover leaflets to wash away the diesel bus grime. Then she put the shamrock in a green bowl in a place of honor on a table topped with a crisp, green-trimmed linen cloth.

Later, she was ready to toast her timely good luck with “a wee bit of drink,” she said in her lilting Irish accent.

Years in the Sun

She said good fortune has shined on her all of her 80 years.

As a young woman, she said, she held a series of prestigious jobs as social secretary to several British aristocrats. Later, she survived World War II’s London blitz. She escaped Nazi wolfpack submarines during a harrowing seven-week sail to New Zealand, where she became the chief fashion buyer for the country’s major department store.

O’Loughlin-Sinclair settled in the United States in 1950. She outlived two husbands and worked as a prominent Broadway playwright’s assistant until she suffered a severe hip injury in a taxicab crash.

Spinning Dreams

That injury forces O’Loughlin-Sinclair to take the bus when she visits a nearby grocery store. That’s where she was headed when she first noticed the shamrock sprouting behind the bus bench.

She buys lottery tickets at the market. And O’Loughlin-Sinclair is sure that “the jackpot is coming” for her soon.

“With the winnings, I’ll go back to Ireland for a visit,” she said.