La Cañada-family owned Tom Sawyer Camps celebrates 90 years of ‘magic’

On Wednesday morning, the typically serene playing fields of Hahamongna Watershed Park sprang to life as some 600 campers and counselors of the La Cañada family-owned Tom Sawyer Camps recognized 90 years of operation with a special birthday celebration.

The morning kicked off with a “Jackpot Challenge,” in which campers searched for hidden counselors scattered throughout the park’s oak groves and trails. Successful searchers received coins, currency they could later exchange for prizes.

The atmosphere vibrated as hundreds of kids ages 3 to 13 searched the premises and teams cheered with each victory. Overseeing it all was Mike Horner, the La Cañada resident whose family took over the camp in 1974 from the founding family and has been running the show ever since.

Horner, known affectionately as “Captain Mike” to campers and staff, explained how he and wife Sally fell in love with the camp after seeing its positive effects on their son Tommy, whom a doctor once diagnosed as “hyperkinetic.”

“He would come home from camp and talk nonstop about everything he’d done that day, then he’d fall asleep in the middle of dinner — we thought, ‘We have found the magic,’” he recalled.

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Some years later, when the family of original founder William P. Schleicher, who’d moved the program from Laguna Beach to Hahamongna in 1944, were struggling with the business and thinking of closing it down, the Horners stepped in.

Since then, while Tom Sawyer Camps has grown to include four camps that run on different sessions, holiday and after-school camps, the original philosophy has remained unchanged, according to Executive Director Sarah Horner Fish.

“It’s a simple formula made up of play and great staff,” she said. “Everyone is like family here.”

Living testaments to that are not hard to find. In one quick glance, Horner Fish identified six counselors who met their spouses through Tom Sawyer Camp. Several employees, like Program Director Eric Ikari, who met his wife when she was a horse counselor there, now has three children who attend the camp.

“People get so much out of this,” he said. “Eighteen years ago when I graduated, I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I came here, met my wife and now I’ve got three kids who are campers.”

One of them, 11-year-old Samantha Ikari, is celebrating her ninth year at Tom Sawyer Camp in the Outpost program, an adventure camp for older kids.

“I like being able to do things outside and to be able to do activities with my friends,” she said, picking rock climbing and trips to the beach as her favorite things to do.

Owen Lichtman, 12, of Sherman Oaks has been attending camp for seven years and says he likes how it’s never the same thing twice. Rock climbing in Outpost even helped him overcome a fear of heights.

“I used to be really scared of things you need a harness for, but once I did rappelling last year it was all good,” he said.

Giving kids a sense of autonomy, teaching through play and letting them get their hands dirty is what Tom Sawyer Camps has always been about, Horner said.

“If you don’t have to hose your child off on the front lawn when you bring them home from camp, we haven’t done our job,” he added with a smile.

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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine