Flapjack Jesus flips along eBay

Religious images that hop out of the frying pan just don't get respect anymore.

By STEPHEN NOHLGREN, Times Staff Writer
Published November 20, 2007

Dana O'Kane's mother made a pancake last week and thought she saw two figures in it. Dana says it is Jesus and Mary.
	[Handout photo]

[Family photo] Dana O'Kane, right, and her mother don't agree on the image in their pancake.

The grainy image emerged from a batch of Great Value pancake mix, bought at Wal-Mart for $1.25 - a suitably humble beginning for a wanna-be apparition.

Port St. Lucie resident Dana O'Kane said she discerned the outline of Jesus and Mary in the mottled pancake and took it as a reassuring sign from her recently departed father.

Her mother, the cook, thought it looked more like a bedouin and Santa Claus.

An Alabama woman, who wanted a gag gift for her soldier-husband about to be deployed to Iraq, bid $338 for it on eBay, only to have the deal fall through.

Finally on Saturday night, an Illinois man claimed it for $29.

Nobody's claiming loaves and fishes here, but it's been an eventful two weeks for a slightly deteriorating breakfast staple.

* * *

Dana O'Kane, 46, suffers from dystonia, a movement disorder similar to Parkinson's disease. She twitches uncontrollably and can't work outside the home, she says. The Social Security Administration has rejected her disability claim, so she sells donated items on eBay to make a living.

Two weeks ago, her mother was about to apply chocolate powder to a batch of pancakes when she noticed headlike shapes at the edge of one.

Her mother, though, did not want to be associated publicly with a Jesus pancake. But she did telephone her daughter, who lives nearby, to come for a viewing.

O'Kane said a halo over one figure tipped her off.

"I know it's Jesus and Mary," she said. "It's unmistakable."

She also hopes her father is sending her a message from beyond. She has already noticed other signals since he died in September, she says: doors closing by themselves, a pine cone rolling off her stove, a family friend who felt an unseen hand squeezing his shoulder.

Maybe her dystonia is going to clear up.

Why put such a precious omen on eBay?

"The whole reason is to come a full circle," she said. "It may open a door for somebody. It may tell somebody 'God bless you.'"