Computer Firm Signs On to Holiday Parade

Ever since childhood, Henry De La Cruz has wanted to be in a Christmas parade. This year, he will be.

Cruz, who works at the Camarillo-based computer-hardware company Imation, talked his colleagues into joining him on a flatbed truck for Saturday’s Camarillo Christmas Parade.

“I had been wanting to do it for years,” De La Cruz said. “This time we had a lot of people working on it. It was fun.”

The Imation group’s Santa’s Workshop float is just one of 115 entries set to travel down Las Posas Road, from Temple Avenue west to Carmen Drive, starting at noon.

While the Imation group prepares for its first entry, Camarillo parade veterans from the Pleasant Valley Lion’s Club are adding finishing touches to their own float.

This year, the club worked with the Regional Occupation Program, a vocation-oriented training program for high school students, to create “It’s a Small World (Holly)day.”

The float will have strobe lights, a spinning steel globe and mechanical “timeout kids,” Lion’s Club spokesman Bill Woolley said.

Parade attendance generally tops 10,000, Woolley said, giving the event a small-town American feeling that local families seem to like.

“It’s normally just a nice outing. They’ve been doing it for a long time and everyone seems to like it,” Woolley said.

Motorists are urged to avoid the parade route. Parts of Temple Avenue and Carmen Drive near Las Posas Road will be closed to traffic as early as 7 a.m.

The rest of the route will be blocked to through traffic after 10 a.m., and portions will be reopened as the parade marches west toward its Community Center destination on Carmen Drive.