Officials Step In : Troubled Boys’ Club to Reopen at New Site

The Eastside Boys’ Club, which shut down abruptly Thursday, will reopen Tuesday in a different place with different management, Boys’ Clubs of America and United Way officials said Friday.

Michael Cohen, a field service representative here for Boys’ Clubs of America, a national association of youth clubs, said a special Olympic sports program will be offered at the nearby Brooklyn Avenue Elementary School in East Los Angeles for children ages 7 to 15.

The fate of the unlicensed day-care center for preschool children at the Eastside club is uncertain, he said.

Sports Program

The free sports program for older children will be under the supervision of Jim Miller and Tim Richardson, on loan from the association’s sports clinics staff, and former program director Gil Silva.

United Way spokeswoman Emily Chappell said the Eastside club’s funding will be restored by late Monday. The charity, which gives the club $85,000 a year, suspended its support last month after parents and volunteers complained about director Leo Hernandez’s management and the inadequacies of the program.

On Thursday, Hernandez fired his staff and locked the doors of the center at 324 N. McDonnell Ave., shutting about 60 youngsters--some as young as 2 years old--out.

Sheriff’s deputies broke into the building, seized about 800 membership records, took the children to the East Los Angeles sheriff’s station and notified parents.

After interviewing Hernandez and others, detectives said they were satisfied that no criminal violations had occurred, and that parents dropping their children off in the morning had simply failed to notice that the center was closed. However, Cohen contended Friday that Hernandez “kicked out the kids.” He said that “not only were the kids pushed out, but program director Silva said he wasn’t even told that the club would be closed.”

Ordered Out of Building

Several children interviewed by The Times also said they were already inside the center when Hernandez ordered everybody out and drove off with the keys.

Cohen said Boys’ Clubs of America representatives have been unable to reach Hernandez or to meet with the Eastside club’s board of directors. He said each club is autonomous, and that legal control of the locked building remains with the local board, not with Boys’ Clubs of America. The Eastside club is expected to file for bankruptcy, he added.

Boys’ Club of America and United Way officials said problems with the club, which serves an area that includes several thousand children, primarily Hispanic, date back about three years.

“We are concerned that there’s been no audit for years, that the board has not raised the money to keep it open, and that there are discrepancies in the bingo (fund-raising games) and summer youth employment program,” Cohen said.

Day-Care Program

Meanwhile, the state Department of Social Services’ community care licensing division is investigating the informal day-care program run by the club.

Joe Kane, licensing supervisor for the Los Angeles area, said that while a license is not required for after-school recreational programs, operating a day-care center on the premises without a license would be a violation of state law. He said his investigators want to talk to Hernandez, and that they will watch the new program at the Brooklyn elementary school.