Last-minute shoppers pack LI malls

Long Islanders who'd forgotten to buy something, or who've just plain procrastinated, packed area malls Saturday just hours before Christmas Eve night.

A rarity in the mostly male crowd at the Walt Whitman Mall was Denise Boccio, of Huntington Station, who was racing the clock. She said her whole family, including seven sisters and five brothers and all their kids, will converge on her mother's house in Huntington Station on Sunday for a Christmas breakfast.

"I just buy gifts for a few; you can't buy for everyone, it never stops," Boccio said of her huge extended family.

Wendy Teplansky and her husband, Eric, of Farmingdale, were also at the Walt Whitman. They liked being amid the throngs of panicked, last-minute shoppers, they said.

"We're traditionally late people," Eric said. "We always wait. It's more fun this way. It feels more real."

But at the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City, Isabelle Garcia, 42, of Westbury, wasn't having as much fun. She'd been to Macy's, JCPenney, and Juicy Couture and was lugging several bags of gifts for her husband, four kids, nieces and nephews.

"There's always something I forgot," she said.

Garcia said that when she gets home, she has to start cooking for the 30 people her family will have over for Christmas on Sunday.

For some, though, being out among the shoppers was a tradition.

At the Dortoni Bakery in Levittown, Jake Gutowitz, 14, waited outside in the cold with his dad, Rich, and about 20 other people to get inside to buy pastries, cookies and bread.

Jake said he and his dad, Levittown residents, go to the bakery every Christmas Eve while his mom gets dinner ready for their Christmas guests.

"Whenever people come home, this is the first place they go," Jake said of the bakery, a local cornerstone.

Rich, 50, nodded. "I've been coming here since I was 10," he said.