From birth, Andrew Luster had what thousands of Californians spend their hard-earned dollars trying to buy each week.

He had wealth -- defined as the ability to live comfortably without inhabiting a suffocating cubicle or sucking up to a boss.

Most of us dream of someday winning the golden Lotto goose, but Luster hit the jackpot just by being born into the Max Factor cosmetics clan.

Most of us also have at least a vague notion of what we would do with the millions if we win. Invariably it involves at least a small dose of helping others -- our family, our faith or our favorite charity.

That's how Luster differs from the Joe and Jane Sixpacks who find themselves in possession of winning lottery tickets.

Luster lived a selfish life -- in fact, he engaged in the most terrible kind of selfishness. With his looks and money, Luster should be the kind of guy who could get a date. But instead he cared so little for the feelings and dignity of others he victimized three women by raping them after he slipped them a mickey. Then, he videotaped the rapes.

When those tapes proved damning, he claimed he was an aspiring porno filmmaker. What a thing to aspire to. This man who is pretty much a waste of skin wanted to make skin flicks.

And when it looked like he would have to pay for his crimes with his freedom, Luster busted a move. He jumped his $1 million bail midtrial in January. A jury convicted him in his absence and a judge sentenced him to 124 years in state prison.

Here's hoping his capture last week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, will mean we won't have to live through any more of this tawdry saga.

The 39-year-old Luster has reinforced the stereotype of the spoiled, self-absorbed, trust-fund baby.

He moved to a Mussel Shoals beach house after graduating from high school. Primarily he surfed and club-hopped. This man who could have been educated at any of America's most revered institutions was a college dropout.

His house revealed much about him, according to defense attorney Richard Hanawalt, who met with Luster after his arrest in July 2000.

Despite his millions, Luster's cottage was wearing around the edges. Linoleum was coming up. So rather than fix it, he just placed an expensive throw rug over it.

Displayed in his living room were photos of the most narcissistic kind. Luster photographed the people on the beach who came to see his home after he became notorious.

He caught them unaware -- something he apparently liked doing.

If he needed a snapshot of how to use inherited wealth, there are role models.

There is Katharine Drexel, a Philadelphia debutante and heir to the Drexel banking fortune. She turned her back on high society to minister to society's forgotten peoples.

She became a nun and founded an order dedicated to educating native Americans and freed slaves. She founded Xavier University in New Orleans, which sends more African-Americans to medical school than any other institution in America.

When the income tax was instituted in the 1920s, it ate away 30 percent of what she planned to give away. So the tax code was amended to exempt people who donate 90 percent of their income to charity. Drexel was the only American to qualify for this exemption.

When she died in 1955, she had given away $20 million. In 2000, she was canonized.

But a person doesn't have to be a saint to do good. Look around Southern California; heirs have donated part of their fortunes to endow universities, build libraries, save symphonies, feed the hungry -- all kinds of compassionate causes done in the public interest.

There is a small part of me that feels compassion for Andrew Luster. This man who loved the ocean will be locked up in a cell where the largest body of water will be the toilet bowl.

But a part of me is angry that a trust-fund kid will cost taxpayers $28,000 a year to house in prison, probably for the rest of his life.

The sad truth of Luster's life is he likely wouldn't be serving time, if he had served somebody other than himself in his lifetime.

-- Colleen Cason's e-mail address is ccason@insidevc.com. Her telephone is 655-5830.