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“He dances. He sings. He's hot,” Heather said as girls around her screeched in agreement.
With more than 20 teen sensations and television stars taking part in the 61st version of the annual event, downtown El Cajon streets were crawling with star chasers hours before the 1 p.m. parade stepped off. Parade organizers said attendance was bigger than last year and might have topped 150,000.
“He's so gorgeous,” Manjarrez said. “That made my day . . . made my life.”
Hoping to breathe new life into the event in its sixth decade, parade organizers teamed with Jillian Hanson-Cox, an El Cajon councilwoman and former actress, to recruit celebrities. Some of stars promoted new movies or CDs.
Eva La Rue, from CBS's “CSI: Miami,” said she wasn't much different from many of the other parents at the parade.
“This is because Corbin Bleu is here,” La Rue said, glancing at her 5-year-old daughter, Kaya, who accompanied her on the red carpet.
The star-studded strategy appeared to work. Crowds were thick along most of the two-mile route along East Main Street, sometimes as many as 12 people deep and spilling onto the street from the sidewalk.
The celebrities gave the parade the kind of aura that it had years ago when it was known as one of the biggest events of its kind west of the Rocky Mountains, Paisley said.
“I think it's fun,” Paisley said. “It was a great idea.”
There was plenty of traditional fare to go along with the glitz: holiday-themed floats, pageant queens, marching bands, horseback riders and big balloon characters such as Mother Goose. A trio of Navy airplanes flew over the grandstands set up in front of City Hall as an extravagant music and dance performance kicked off the parade.
Firefighters in their trucks received frenzied ovations that rivaled only those that greeted Bleu along the route.
Heather, the sophomore who wanted Bleu to accompany her to a school dance, kept her composure when Bleu spotted her sign in the crowd and approached her.
“You're so cute,” Bleu said, hugging the stunned teen.
While Bleu couldn't make it to the dance, he did give Heather his autograph. And for a moment, she said, she thought anything was possible: “I wasn't sure what was going to happen.”