It seems like a plot straight out of a Hallmark Channel holiday movie: A woman from the big city arrives in an idyllic woodsy village, buys its dive bar and becomes a fixture in the community. One evening, as she’s orchestrating the tiny town’s holiday tree lighting, someone steals the town’s decorations. 

So what does she do? She puts on her detective hat and starts to figure out who the potential Grinches are. And at the same time, she witnesses acts of kindness and generosity unfold one by one as the small community rallies and sends donations to buy new decorations to keep the holiday spirit alive. 

Then lo and behold — in the middle of the night — a real twist: The decorations are returned. 

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Sound too good to be true? Well, it could happen, and it did right in Kernville, a tiny Central California town on the shores of the Kern River. 

Summer days on the Kern River near Kernville, Calif.

In the middle of it all is Tricia La Belle, owner of the town’s fabled Sportsman’s Inn, a popular hub for a drink and a game of pool. 

La Belle, who also lives in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles and owns and operates several bars and nightclubs there, said she discovered Kernville shortly after she moved to the West Coast from Connecticut in 1989.

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“When I moved from Connecticut to LA, my first thought in LA was, ‘Where’s the water?’ Even though we were not far from the ocean shore, we have so many lakes and rivers back East,” she told SFGATE. “I was a fisherman and I was on the........

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