The Region - News from April 6, 1986

Lenny the Lobster, a 20-pound crustacean raffled off at a Vons supermarket in Garden Grove, was saved from the steam pot when his new owner, Allen Nelson, had neither the stomach nor the heart to eat it. “Once I found out they named him Lenny,” said Nelson, 56, “I couldn’t see myself asking for another fork-full of Lenny.” Instead, Nelson donated the Atlantic Maine lobster to the Marineland aquatic amusement park on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where officials estimated Lenny’s age to be about 40. Supermarket seafood manager Jim Reed applauded Nelson’s treatment of Lenny. “A lot of people thought it would have been a shame that he lived so long and ended up on somebody’s dinner plate,” Reed said.