Project Helps to Rehabilitate House, Inmates

By the time a work crew of furloughed federal prisoners, volunteers, family members and neighbors finished hacking through Harriet Hadewig’s overgrown backyard Monday, it looked as though a road had been cut through an Amazonian rain forest.

The rats and mice that had attracted the attention of city health officials had scattered, and at least one opossum had been sent to its reward.

But clearing the yard and driveway and cleaning out a half-century’s worth of accumulated detritus from the 94-year-old widow’s garage was only the first day’s work in a two-week project of the Prison Fellowship Ministries, sponsored by the Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton. By Aug. 18, the prisoners--all minimum security, nonviolent offenders with less than a year remaining on their sentences--hope to have painted the house, replaced rotted screens, repaired the leaking roof and replaced the old wood-shake shingles with fiberglass.

‘It’s Great’

“I think it’s great,” said Hadewig, who lives on a fixed income. “There’s no words to express what I think about it.”

“I sure do appreciate this effort,” said Eugene Piantoni, Hadewig’s son-in-law, who also worked with the crew on Monday. “We’ve been trying to get this work done for 20 years.”

David True, a young neighbor, approached Hadewig several times with offers to help fix the place up, in part because “it’s always been a strong street in terms of keeping things up.” At first, he recalled, Hadewig was reluctant.

True, a management consultant and former deacon at Evangelical Free Church, knew that Bob Patterson, the church’s local project coordinator for prison activities, was looking for a house in the area to work on for Prison Fellowship Ministries, a national organization founded by Watergate figure Charles Colson. So he asked Hadewig again, and this time she agreed.

“One of the hardest things to find is a suitable project” for the prisoners to work on, said Patterson, a high school teacher. “This is something we can sink our teeth into.”

Last year the church-sponsored project renovated a nearby house, also in Fullerton, owned by Pearl Studebaker, who said she was quite pleased with the results.

Colson, a former White House aide, talked about prison work at the Fullerton Church two years ago, Patterson said, and the remarks served “as a prod to the conscience” of the generally conservative congregation. Although the Evangelical Free Church had a program to feed the poor, said Patterson, “we’re not usually involved in social Gospel-type work.”

But the message somehow took hold, and now between 50 and 60 congregants correspond with prisoners in state and federal prisons. About 10 people visit institutions on a regular basis, including a Bible study group at the California Institution for Men in Chino. Groups have gone to the federal prison at Terminal Island, and individuals have gone to the Orange County Jail to meet with inmates on a one-to-one basis.

This year the church contributed $3,000 to help underwrite the cost of building materials and supporting expenses in connection with the Prison Fellowship Ministries’ Community Service Project. According to Herman Head, of the organization’s Washington office, 69 houses in 46 cities have been built from the ground up or refurbished since 1981, and this year 35 to 40 more projects are planned.

Federal Inmates

The six inmates working on the Hadewig house come from federal prison camps at Lompoc and Boron, and all had been out on furlough before. They were screened for this project by the prison staff and chaplain’s office, and by the fellowship. Because of their nonviolent background and the closeness of release dates, Patterson said, “they have nothing to gain by taking off.”

Twelve local families volunteered to serve as hosts, each taking in one of the prisoners for one week. They pack lunches each weekday, provide dinners in their homes and even take their guests out, without any reimbursement. Several nights a week the prisoners speak to groups about their experiences in prison and with drugs.

Learned From Prisoner

Jon Campbell said that he and his wife took Jacinto Monarrez into their home this year after “learning more from our prisoner last year than he did from us.” Campbell, who took Monarrez to an Angels’ game Monday night, said that he became involved in Prison Fellowship shortly after the organization was formed in 1976 because several members of his own family had gotten into trouble.

Patterson said another family became involved in the project after the wife, who works in a bank, witnessed a robbery and testified in court.

Charles Dudley, who is serving a 30-month sentence at Lompoc for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, said he was grateful for the opportunity to “help a lady who can’t do for herself.” Dudley, 36, said he heads a 13-man painting crew at the prison camp, a skill he expects to make use of on the Hadewig house. This program, he said, gave him a “chance to meet people on a person-to-person basis.”

At the Boron prison facility, inmate Jeff Mansfield, an electrician by trade, works as a pool orderly, lifeguard and swimming instructor. He said that working on the house provided a “good experience to get out and do something positive.” He said he found it “a joy that people are so open with me in their homes.” Mansfield, 33, is serving 24 months for conspiracy to possess cocaine.

Crew ‘Stacks Up’

Chet Niles, the volunteer work-site supervisor, has been working with construction crews around the world for the past six years with Wycliffe Associates Construction Ministries, based in Orange. The crew he had last year on the Studebaker house “would stack up against any of the crews I’ve had in past years,” said Niles, who is retired from the Northrop Corp. “Most of them will do just about anything you ask them to.”