A Year-End Review: Tying Up Some of the Loose Ends From 1984

View has revisited some of the people and places it reported on in 1984 to update what has happened. Among them:

--Some of the “Survival in the ‘80s” subjects, including Carol Kunicki, who pushed her credit cards to their limits and lived on the edge of insolvency.

--The local population of endangered peregrine falcons, which View readers helped name in a contest.

--Ruby Braxton, the sister of Cornelius Johnson, a gold medal winner in the 1936 Olympics. She tried to gain for her brother the recognition she felt he never received from his hometown.

--Jan Taylor, a young woman who was born without arms or legs and graduated with honors from Scripps College, Claremont, and hoped to go to law school.

Polio Victim’s Bonanza Pennies, not from heaven but from his old junior high school, showered on polio victim Jose Romero this holiday season. So did college money, a new wheelchair, legal help and a car.

Romero, the subject of a Nov. 11 Times story, contracted polio in his native Mexico when he was 2. An uncle brought Romero here 11 years ago to get medical care and later abandoned the boy, who became a ward of the courts. Raised in two San Gabriel Valley foster homes, Romero developed into an honor student. He took part in a statewide youth leadership conference and was elected a student body officer at Gladstone High School in Azusa despite being confined to a wheelchair because polio withered his legs. Romero has undergone several operations at Orthopaedic Hospital for scoliosis and needs several more operations to correct severe spinal curvature.

When Romero turned 18, and ceased being a ward of the courts, he was told he faced deportation as an illegal alien. About 140 illegal alien children in Los Angeles County are wards of the juvenile courts, but the courts do not seek resident alien status or citizenship for these children.

Romero said he is terrified at the prospect of deportation because he barely speaks Spanish and believes he could not get a good job and necessary medical care there.

U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) said that he will sponsor a bill to make Romero a citizen. Meanwhile, attorney Jack Golan of the mid-Wilshire law firm Popkin, Shamir & Golan volunteered to help Romero apply for an administrative order blocking deportation on hardship grounds.

“The students at Lone Hill School Junior High in San Dimas, where I attended sixth grade, collected $1,300 for me through a penny drive,” Romero said. “The school invited me to lunch and all the kids wanted to meet me. All these kids--who had never seen me before--came up saying, ‘Jose! Jose, we’re all behind you. We want you to stay here in the United States,’ ” he said.

A Hollywood businessman, who wishes to remain anonymous, has ordered a lightweight wheelchair that will make it easier for Romero to get around Cal Poly Pomona, where Romero is studying hotel management. The businessman is also fitting a late-model car with hand controls and giving it to Romero. And for Christmas, instead of sending his customers bottles of liquor, the businessman sent each a card saying a donation had been made in their name to a fund to benefit Romero. The fund came to $2,500 and the money was given to Romero at the businessman’s annual holiday party for his employees.

In addition, a couple working through attorney Joel Kantor of Pettler & Kantor in Los Angeles and who wish to remain anonymous are setting up a fund to help Romero finish his studies in hotel management.

“What has happened is just great,” Romero said while spending Christmas with his first foster parents, Robey and Connie Paul of San Dimas. “I’m overjoyed with all the people who have responded and to learn that there are people out there who are interested in helping other people.”