Grief Hits Home in Southland

Orlantha Ambrose adopted Sri Lanka, the land of her parents, as her home. Despite their concerns, the 33-year-old former kindergarten teacher moved from Encino to Colombo more than a year ago to teach poor children to play the violin.

That mission drew her parents to Sri Lanka to see the culmination of her work: a holiday concert by her students.

On Sunday, Ambrose and her mother, Beulah, were among the thousands swept away by the tsunami that ravaged the island nation. Her father, Anton Ambrose, an Encino gynecologist, survived and was treated at a Sri Lankan hospital.

News of the women’s deaths spread quickly in Los Angeles’ tightly knit Sri Lankan community, as grief and frustration rippled through Southern California’s large expatriate populations from Southern Asian nations affected by Sunday’s earthquake and tsunami.

Thousands of Asians who have settled in the Los Angeles area scrambled to restore lifelines to their native lands, organizing vigils, offering prayers, raising money and trying to contact missing loved ones.

Southern California is home to 4,442 Sri Lankans, 90,757 Indians, 28,395 Thais and 11,896 Indonesians, according to U.S. Census figures.

Consular officials, however, estimate that the populations are vastly larger.

The communities are connected to their homelands by culture, commerce and love. On Monday, as the death toll from the weekend’s undersea earthquake and tsunami passed 26,000, the enclaves -- Thais in Hollywood, Indians in Artesia and Sri Lankans in Sun Valley -- were unified by misery, shock and an impulse to help.

“There is no limit to the sorrow,” said Nisha Engineer, a teller at the State Bank of India branch in Artesia.

The mood was somber in Artesia’s Little India neighborhood, a strip of storefronts plastered with posters of smiling Bollywood stars. Shopkeepers there had begun raising money for relief efforts.

In Burbank, the nonprofit Islamic Relief USA asked worshipers to donate funds for tents and medical supplies at Friday prayers. And at North Hollywood’s Wat Thai Temple, officials reorganized a previously planned Jan. 16 charity event to focus solely on disaster relief.

Other efforts were more personal. In Upland, college counselor Rehana Mowjood called her sister in Colombo and was relieved to learn that she was unharmed. Mowjood vowed to send money to help pay for the white funeral shrouds for Sri Lanka’s Muslim dead.

A lack of traditional burial garments, she said, “is just the immediate problem. But a lot of other problems are coming up along the way.”

In Los Angeles’ Sri Lankan community, friends said Anton and Beulah Ambrose had traveled overseas to help their daughter with the holiday concert sponsored by Strings by the Sea, a nonprofit organization that she had started in Los Angeles to teach music to underprivileged children.

When the tsunami hit, the family was vacationing near Yala National Park in the southeastern part of the island, off India’s southeastern coast.

The Ambroses’ son, Cezhan, 30, left Los Angeles on Sunday to be with his father, said family friend Dr. Michael Perera. Perera said the bodies of the two women had been recovered and identified.

Family friends said Ambrose and his wife had maintained close ties to their homeland despite immigrating to the United States more than three decades ago and had instilled their children with the same devotion to Sri Lanka.

Anton Ambrose channeled his efforts through medical relief, helping found the Sri Lankan Medical Assn. of North America and raising funds for medical equipment for struggling hospitals back home. His daughter exported her music program to Colombo. Orlantha had taught kindergarten and first grade at Walgrove Elementary School in Mar Vista, where she gave up her lunch breaks and recess periods to teach violin.

“We were a low-performing school,” said Yuri Hayashi, Walgrove’s principal. “Most of the children had not even held a real violin in their hands. She wanted to teach violin and through music improve academic achievement. As it turned out, many of the children she worked with did do much better.”

Also included among the dead was the Thai American grandson of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Poomi Jensen. The 21-year-old son of Princess Ubolratana and her ex-husband, Peter Jensen of San Diego, had been jet-skiing at the Khao Lak beach resort when the waves swept the young royal away.

“It’s very sad,” said Sriwong Ayasit, publisher of a Los Angeles-based Thai newspaper, Khai-Sod (Update News) and host of a television show, “Windows of Thailand,” about the overseas Thai community. “He’s too young to die.”

For others, the fates of family members remained a mystery Monday. Phone service to affected areas was spotty, and immigrants turned to relatives and friends -- as well as satellite TV stations broadcast in Thai and Tamil -- to piece together information.

By midafternoon Monday, Farida Tio had made dozens of phone calls to her home island of Sumatra, whose coastal communities were Indonesia’s hardest-hit areas. She got through just once, to a brother-in-law in unaffected Jakarta. He told Tio that her brothers and sisters were probably in Jakarta and most likely were fine. But he was sobbing, Tio said.

His mother’s house was in Banda Aceh, at the devastated northern tip of the island. The house, he learned, had been swept away. He assumed that his mother was dead but didn’t know.

“He cried and cried,” the 44-year old Tio said. “He loves his mother so much, and he still doesn’t know. I cried and cried too.”

Tio’s sole consolation came from patrons at her West Los Angeles restaurant, Indo Cafe.

“They ask me what part of Indonesia I’m from, is my family OK, am I OK,” Tio said. “I say all the communication is just cut off. I appreciate them asking very much, very much.”

Many Asian Americans expressed pride in their native cultures, but some were skeptical that their countries’ governments were capable of adequately responding to the disaster. That made the need for aid more urgent, they said.

“In India, everything is bureaucracy,” said Ramaa Bharadvaj, a Yorba Linda Indian dance teacher who has been glued to Internet news sites. “The world is pouring support in. I hope it reaches the people.”

Disha Patel, 16, prayed with her family Monday at the Radha Krishna Temple in Norwalk, an unassuming stucco building next to a Pizza Hut.

“The government over there is so much weaker ... and the poor people never had anything to begin with,” she said. “Now the little they had is lost.”

Arif Shaikh, a spokesman for Islamic Relief USA, said the group’s relief effort, like others sponsored by Catholic and Hindu groups, needed the support of donors from all faiths.

Over the weekend, Islamic Relief announced that it was trying to raise $1.35 million to deal with the devastation.

On Monday, as the death toll continued to climb, Shaikh said the group would probably have to revise its fundraising goals upward.

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Hitting home

Southern California is home to many individuals who trace their ancestry to some of the countries hard-hit by Sunday’s earthquake and tsunami.

*--* Number Country of individuals* India 90,757 Thailand 28,395 Indonesia 11,896 Sri Lanka 4,442 Bangladesh 3,683 Malaysia 3,132 Myanmar 2,783 Somalia 345

*--*

* Census Bureau estimates for Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties

Source: Census Bureau, 2000 census, Public Use Microdata 5% Sample

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Aid for quake and tsunami victims

These are among the aid agencies accepting contributions for assistance that they or their affiliates will provide for those affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Asia.

Action Against Hunger

247 W. 37th, Suite 1201

New York, NY 10018

(212) 967-7800

www.aah-usa.org

ADRA International

12501 Old Columbia Pike

Silver Spring, MD 20904

(800) 424-2372

www.adra.org

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC Crisis Fund)

1501 Cherry St.

Philadelphia, PA 19102

(215) 241-7000

www.afsc.org

American Jewish World Service

45 West 36th St., 10th Floor

New York, NY 10018-7904

(800) 889-7146

www.ajws.org

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

“JDC: South Asia Tsunami Relief “

Box 321

847A 2nd Ave.

New York, NY 10017

(212) 687-6200 ext. 851

www.jdc.org

Care USA

151 Ellis St., N.E.

Atlanta, GA 30303-2440

(800) 521-CARE ext. 999

www.careusa.org

Catholic Relief Services

P.O. Box 17090

Baltimore, MD 21203-7090

(800) 736-3467

www.catholicrelief.org

Christian Children’s Fund

2821 Emerywood Parkway

Richmond, VA 23294

(800) 776-6767

www.christianchildrensfund.org

Church World Service

P.O. Box 968

Elkhart, IN 46515

(800) 297-1516

www.churchworldservice.org

Direct Relief International

27 S. La Patera Lane

Santa Barbara, CA 93117

(805) 964-4767

www.directrelief.org

Doctors Without Borders

P.O. Box 1856

Merrifield, VA 22116-8056

(888) 392-0392

www.doctorswithoutborders.org

International Medical Corps

1919 Santa Monica Blvd. Suite 300

Santa Monica, CA 90404

(800) 481-4462

www.imcworldwide.org

International Orthodox

Christian Charities

110 West Road, Suite 360

Baltimore, MD 21204

(877) 803-4622

www.iocc.org

Lutheran World Relief

P.O. Box 17061

Baltimore, MD 21298-9832

(800) 597-5972

www.lwr.org

MAP International

2200 Glynco Parkway

P.O. Box 215000

Brunswick, GA 31521-5000

(800) 225-8550

www.map.org

Mercy Corps

Dept. W

P.O. Box 2669

Portland, OR 97208

(888) 256-1900

www.mercycorps.org

Operation USA

8320 Melrose Ave., Suite 200

Los Angeles, CA 90069

(800) 678-7255

www.opusa.org

Oxfam America Asia

Earthquake Fund

26 West St.

Boston, MA 02111-1206

(800) 77 OXFAM

www.oxfamamerica.org

Save the Children

54 Wilton Road

Westport, CT 06880

(800) 728-3843

www.savethechildren.org

US Fund for UNICEF

333 E. 38th St.

New York, NY 10016

(800) 4UNICEF

www.unicefusa.org

World Concern

19303 Fremont Ave. N.

Seattle, WA 98133

(800) 755-5022

www.worldconcern.org

World Vision

P.O. Box 78481

Tacoma, WA 98481

(888) 56CHILD

www.worldvision.org

Source: Associated Press

Times staff writers Seema Mehta, Caitlin Liu, Eric Slater and Rachana Rathi contributed to this report.