By the time she went out to celebrate, on the night before her 21st birthday, Lorna Deshane had hoped to have a fake ID.

This was going to be the party of her life. But for whatever reason, Deshane’s granddaughter never made her the fake ID she had promised.

“I don’t think I’ll have a problem,” Deshane said with a laugh.

She’s 84.

Deshane was born Feb. 29, 1932, and her birthdate comes once every four years. So today is the 21st time she has celebrated on Feb. 29. She’s turning 21, just like she did the first time … in 1953.

She is a “leapean,” which, she said, “sounds like some species of alligator.”

A leap year birthday has been good to Deshane, who, according to her copy of the Santa Ana Register from March 1932, was the first leap day baby born at St. Joseph Hospital and in the city of Orange.

“I’ll tell you one thing about her leap year birthday,” cracked her husband, Ray Deshane, who was a Marine. “You’re not getting away cheap.”

Every fourth year, the couple do something big to commemorate her leap day. Once, he rented a limousine and took her to a comedy club in Orange.

“That was my 15th birthday,” she said. “I was 60.”

Ray Deshane, 75, is a long-haul trucker, and until four years ago, he’d taken his wife to every state in the union, except Alaska. For her 20th birthday, when she was 80, Lorna’s family gave her an Alaska cruise.

“The leap year birthday has been the best thing in my life,” she said. “Every four years is very special.”

For her 21st birthday, her family arranged to take her to Moreno’s Restaurant in Orange on Sunday, and she plans to spend today at Disneyland, where she will sing “Yo Ho” in her favorite ride, “The Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“I have more fun than is allowed,” she said.

Her father, Charles McCandless, was a tile contractor who worked on some of Orange County’s iconic projects – the fountain in the Orange Plaza, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, South Coast Plaza and Fashion Island. He owned 4 acres of orange groves that he eventually converted to tract housing.

In 1932, Lorna Deshane said, the nuns at St. Joseph advised her mother not to give birth on Feb. 29 because the birthdate wouldn’t come around each year. But her birth records show she was delivered by Dr. A.H. Domann on Feb. 29 at 11:30 a.m. She was 7 pounds, 2 ounces.

As she grew up, she was glad the nuns didn’t get their way. In non-leap years, her parents allowed her to pick the day to celebrate her birthday.

“Everybody always made my birthday special for me,” she said.

Deshane graduated from Orange Union High (part of which became Chapman University), had three children and lived most of her life in the Nutwood Place neighborhood in Orange. She now lives next door to the house where she grew up. She has two dogs – Baxter and Charlie, who is named after her father. A 100-foot-tall redwood tree anchors the front yard. A fully restored and drivable 1914 Ford sits in the garage.

“That’s Lizzie,” she said of the car. “She’s 102 years old.”

She loves the neighborhood, although she has said goodbye to a lot of friends.

“I’m the last person standing,” she said. “Everybody died.” Her goal is to make it to her 26th birthday, when she’ll be 104.

“I’m old, so what,” she said. “I’m above ground. Being the opposite would bother me. When I’m 104, I want to be lucid. And I want to go to Disneyland.”

That will be in 2036.

Looking ahead made Deshane think of this quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson and several others: “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming – WOW – what a ride!”

Contact the writer: ksharon@ocregister.com