‘Outpouring’ of Gifts Sustains Fire Victims

Afamily’s life savings went up in smoke in Moorpark this week because, like many immigrants from Latin America, they kept it in cash in their home.

Now sympathetic Ventura County residents are helping them get back on their feet.

A radio station in Ventura, KVEN, raised $4,426 in a daylong program for the 28 members of the extended family living in the house, said Irv August, director of the Ventura County chapter of the America Red Cross. The Red Cross has provided the family with temporary shelter at a Moorpark motel and will allocate $15,000 in cash and household goods, he said.

“This outpouring from the community has just been unbelievable,” said Francois de la Roche, another Red Cross official. “I’ve never seen this before in nine years of disaster work.”

“All this giving is really generous,” fire victim Silvia Acosta said in Spanish. “Right now we need people, but later we will help others. I really appreciate how everyone has helped us, especially those we didn’t know.”

Fire Caused by Short

Acosta, 25, her husband, six children, in-laws and other relatives lost their home on Monday. The dilapidated stucco house they rented above Walnut Canyon Road in Moorpark was ruined by a fire caused by an electrical short. Along with their other property, they lost $3,000 that was in a small suitcase.

“When the fire broke out, I didn’t think of the money. I thought of my children first,” Acosta said. “They are the most important. When I told my husband, he said the money didn’t matter--what matters are the children.”

On Wednesday night she took her children on a shopping trip to a Mervyn’s department store in Simi Valley. They spent four hours carefully spending $620 donated by the Red Cross.

Keeping large amounts of cash is typical of many recent immigrants, experts said.

“You’d be surprised how many people keep money in the mattress, or even buried,” said Isabel Miranda, a Chicano studies professor at California State University, Northridge. “They don’t trust the banks, because they’re part of the system. They don’t have the confidence in the institutions.”

Banks Rare in Mexican Countryside

The Acostas are from the Mexican state of Guanajuato. In such rural areas, people often keep money at home because banks are rare, said Nellie Salgado de Snyder, associate director of the Spanish-Speaking Mental Health Center at UCLA.

“People in Mexico tend to keep a lot of cash in their homes,” she said. “Banks operate on limited hours, and if you have an emergency after hours and need cash, forget it.”

She said illegal immigrants often avoid institutions where they will be asked for identification, out of fear of being deported. The Acostas have lived in the United States for six years and have applied for amnesty under the new federal immigration law, Silvia Acosta said.

It took them two years to save $3,000 from what Enrique Acosta, Silvia’s husband, makes as a manager in a Simi Valley clothing factory. They planned to use it as a down payment for their own home.

Silvia Acosta said they kept cash at home because they feared that creditors might take it from them if they kept it in a bank account, even though they were paying their bills.

“There are a lot of people who do not trust the banking system here in the U. S. mainly because they don’t understand how the system works,” Miranda said.

Miranda, a former bank teller in Oxnard, said many Latino immigrants who came to her branch simply cashed their paychecks. She said a man once came in with a box filled with several thousand dollars in crumbling bills he had kept buried in his yard.

“Rain had seeped into the box, and he wanted to salvage the money,” Miranda said.

Authorities said the family is so large that it’s likely the Acostas and their relatives will have to move into at least three homes.

On Thursday, De la Roche met with the family in one of its crowded motel rooms and said, “It’s very important to find a permanent place as soon as possible. The sooner you find a place, the more comfortable you’ll be.”

Family members agreed, saying that they missed being able to cook.

“We just eat cold foods,” said Victoria Mena Acosta, Silvia Acosta’s mother-in-law.

A few minutes later the women received word that members of a church were bringing them hot chicken. They began to cry.