Mother’s Day-- Even Skid Row Pays Its Respects

Darlene Dominguez held 2-year-old Serena in her arms, one of her four squirming little ones, and pondered a Mother’s Day that found her without work, without a car, without a partner to help her raise her family.

“My children make me very happy and that’s all that really matters,” she said, squeezing Serena as the tiny girl’s twin sister, Samantha, clambered onto a nearby chair. “As long as they’re happy, I’m happy.”

The 25-year-old mother joined nearly 1,000 other poor or homeless men and women at the Fred Jordan Mission on Skid Row on Sunday for a free Mother’s Day feast.

While some mothers faced with Dominguez’s burden might lose hope, she and many others who attended the event said they take strength from their children’s love, and from their belief that life will get better.

Counts Her Blessings

Dominguez, who is separated from her husband, said she is “a lot more fortunate than others” because she has a place to live, just outside downtown Los Angeles, and the free food programs on Skid Row are close by.

Willie Jordan, who operates the mission with her husband, Fred, said that the number of women with families has increased dramatically on Skid Row recently.

“When this shelter opened in 1949, Skid Row was strictly for men only,” Jordan said. “But now it’s a place for all people who hit bottom and somehow end up here, trying to start over.”

There are so many more women and children seeking food, a place to sleep, or a place to take a hot shower that the shelter, which now offers housing for 200 men, is moving forward with plans to open a shelter especially for women.

Barb, a 27-year-old mother from Minnesota who moved to Los Angeles two years ago looking for work, said that her life on Skid Row with her 8-month-old son, Ernest, “has been pretty different, but I’m pretty tough.”

She said that while Skid Row has a reputation for being a rough place, especially at night, women with children are looked after by others on the street.

“People have more respect for you down here if you’re a mother, and if you’re trying, and I’m trying,” she said.

Barb, who did not give her last name, said she is enrolled in word processing classes at a local technical school and hopes to get a job.

Meanwhile, she said, “The mission here is a particular help, with clothes, food, and diapers--diapers are really important.”

Skid Row is not the only area of Los Angeles where women down on their luck are finding help.

1,000 Visits

Officials of the Good Shepherd Center for Homeless Women, at 267 Belmont Avenue, west of the Civic Center, have been visited “well over 1,000 times” by women since the facility opened three years ago, said Patricia Novello, a spokeswoman.

The shelter, which is celebrating its third anniversary today, also seeks out and offers help to homeless mentally ill women who frequent the Mid-Wilshire, MacArthur Park and Echo Park areas, she said.

“Some are so terrified you can’t even get them into the shelter the first time it’s offered, but they come after two or three tries,” Novello said.