Center Offers Shelter From the Storm : Multi-Service Building for Central American Refugees Helps With Legal, Medical Needs

Morning sunlight flooded the pleasant reception area of the neighborhood clinic, as Adam Castillo bent over a clipboard filling out intake forms for his son’s school physical while 5-year-old Reynardo fidgeted and flopped around next to him. Castillo, proud and solicitous of Reynardo, would glance reassuringly at him every once in a while, now and then offering one of the storybooks he had brought.

The scene had a Norman Rockwell look about it, a slice of Americana--even though the Castillos had arrived in this country from Nicaragua only four months ago; even though the clinic, Edificio Romero, was dedicated only a few months ago; even though the cheerful look of freshly painted pastel walls and whimsically placed artificial flowers was jarred by a grim painting of a woman grieving over the corpse of a young man lying in a street near a building bearing the word Venceremos (we shall overcome).

And, in fact, what happened at the center--”the nation’s first multi-service center organized for Central American refugees”--as the day progressed was a slice of Americana, but a not-always-pleasant one.

The doors of the storefront building on Olympic Boulevard had been open for only a few minutes but already the reception area was busy with people signing in at the desks of Clinica Msr. Oscar A. Romero for medical help, El Rescate for legal counseling and social services and the Community Counseling Service for mental health problems--walk-ins at the clinic and El Rescate, scheduled appointments for individual and group counseling.

Student Volunteer

Ricardo Garcia, the receptionist for El Rescate, was already filling page after page of a telephone message pad, alternately speaking Spanish and English. A Salvadoran who has been here for 10 years, he is an art student and member of “Los Cipotes,” a group of Central American artists. A graphic arts textbook lay beside the telephone, impossible to get to.

Forms completed, the Castillos took their places on the cushioned benches where the clinic patients, mostly women with babies and young children, waited. Castillo did not join in the women’s chitchat, but stared studiously at the walls.

Soon Aurora Martinez, a retired R.N., ushered them into a consultation room. As one of the founders of the clinic and a volunteer, this calm, efficient Chicana knows the system of health care in Los Angeles and the culture of her patients well. And she extracts information painlessly.

In no time at all, she observed, “Well, here is a 5-year-old child who is still on a bottle three times a day, who sucks his thumb, who is severely constipated and who is very, very nervous. It’s usual with Nicaraguans. It’s good they came in. Health care is pretty good in Nicaragua, so he’s up to date on his immunizations.”

On to the examining room to wait for the doctor. Castillo was eager to cooperate, helping his son undress, then wrapping him in sweaters against the chill, urging picture books on the increasingly apprehensive little boy.

Not to worry. Kendra Gorlitsky, a second-year resident in community medicine from Kaiser Permanente assigned to the clinic for her elective time, has a way with children. Castillo engaged in lively conversation with her as she started examining Reynardo from the toes up, offering as an aside to a visitor that doing it that way is “often less threatening with children.”

The boy was frightened to the point of crying only when she came at him with a flashlight to look at his ears and eyes. That part of the exam was conducted while he cuddled on his father’s lap as Castillo gently kissed him.

When tested, Reynardo knew his colors, his body parts, knew how to count, and was communicative, polite, friendly, humorous.

‘Really Responsive’

“Probably this kid would be great in school. He’s really responsive to me,” Gorlitsky said.

But Reynardo does not want to go to school. He was very firm about that, shaking his finger for emphasis.

He does not speak English, and that is what they speak at the school. He frets about this, and all the assurances in the world do not impress or dissuade him.

Much advice and commentary in Spanish pass between the doctor and Castillo. No, Castillo explained, he is not employed, but is looking for work. He brings out a business card he had printed up advertising sign-making. He can make signs, he said. He used to work with the health ministry in Nicaragua, where his wife and two other children still live. He lives here with Reynardo, another son and a 13-year-old daughter who is not doing well, he said. She is very sad without her mother, is nervous and insecure, is afraid to go out. Castillo said he doesn’t know if or when his wife will be able to join him here.

Castillo delivers all this information in a matter-of-fact tone, his manner friendly and cooperative but formal.

He agreed to stick around long enough for Reynardo to be seen by a counselor at the Community Counseling Service upstairs. And he expressed polite interest when told the service had a adjustment group for young people with problems similar to his daughter’s.

They lingered and Reynardo soon relaxed enough to assume an air of great familiarity and was instructing other children how to use the eye exam chart.

Shared Offices

Down the hallway at El Rescate, Salvador Lopez, once a law student in El Salvador, offered what social services he could to Central Americans who found their way to the cramped office he shares with Jaime Flores, a Salvadoran who runs El Refugio, El Rescate’s nearby temporary shelter for families.

Variations on the same story, he indicated: the young-looking mother who arrived with her18-year-old-son, the son recently arrived from El Salvador without papers. Worried that the military would claim him, she had borrowed $1,400 from a loan company to pay the coyote. Now, she worried about paying it back on her $4-an-hour garment center salary. The son sat beside her, looking ready to bolt.

The way the laws worked now, Lopez counseled them, there was little El Rescate could do unless the young man applied for political asylum, which would buy some time. He referred them to Carecen, an agency that could advise them in immigration.

Later, Flores would offer more tangible help to another Salvadoran family that arrived: young parents, two toddlers and an infant, stroller and paraphernalia in tow.

Broke and put out of the apartment they had been sharing with another family, Oscar and Maria Rodriguez had wandered the streets for a day with their family before winding up at El Rescate.

Rodriguez has been in the country since 1983, two months short of the cut-off date for applying for amnesty. Maria Rodriguez arrived in 1985. When the amnesty laws went into effect earlier this year, Oscar’s employer, fearing repercussions, let him go.

Now they needed everything. Lopez assured him of a place to stay at El Refugio for the next two months. Since Maria said she had fled here specifically to escape the death squads who had killed her uncle, it was worth trying for political asylum.

And if asylum is not granted?

“I don’t see much hope,” Flores said. “Maybe Canada. Oh, I could send them out of Los Angeles, if a church or some other group would take them. I’ll have to make some phone calls.”

‘They Keep Coming’

Change in the laws or not, Flores said, Central Americans and Mexicans are still coming over the border: “It’s hard when they come, but they keep coming. El Refugio is always full.”

The day also offered up a former lawyer from Nicaragua who had been working in a warehouse but was now out of work. An unusual client, Lopez said, since Nicaraguans do not have the problems with legality that other Central Americans usually have, Lopez said. And, besides, this man was a professional.

Mario Guillan sat there restless and in seeming consternation at his plight, sitting, as he was, in a refugee center looking for help. He needed a job right away, he said. He had been looking. Now he was desperate. He lived with his uncle and had to come up with the $345 rent.

He speaks little English and said he’d do anything. Nevertheless Lopez seemed embarrassed, reluctant almost, to offer the only thing available that day, a reference to an electronics company where they paid minimum wage.

Instead Guillan opted to keep looking on his own, but he did accept Lopez’s offer to enroll him in El Rescate’s food distribution program.

On the desk between them lay Guillan’s card from the Employment Service with a list of job interviews he had gone out on to no avail. And a paper from a private employment service he had paid--for which, he told Lopez scoffingly, they had done nothing more than steal his money.

“He’s been using all the services society provides,” Lopez said, shaking his head. “Unfortunately, he has not found them to work.”

After Guillan had left, Lopez looked unsettled. He too had been a law student. He understood what the man was going through.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “I know, of course, I speak English and he doesn’t. I’m one of the lucky ones--working here. I don’t know why.”

The morning proceeded, busy but calm. No one was prepared for the commotion that accompanied Adam Castillo when he was helped down the stairs from the counseling service. Hyperventilating and gasping for breath, he was gulping and looking terrified, his face blotched. The counselor, a tall, strong woman, almost carried him down the hallway to the doctor.

There was a scurrying among the staff of the different agencies. They quickly learned Castillo had a history of heart attacks.

His son had been sent out of the consultation room and Diane Jacoby, on the clinic staff, offered the child paper, suggesting he amuse himself drawing. In a furious burst of energy he filled it in seconds, line by line, with slanted lines.

The elder Castillo calmed down, rested an hour, and then took his son home. He agreed to bring the boy back for another appointment and to urge his daughter to come.

Upstairs, at the counseling center, Janine Cuellar, the counselor from L.A. Child Guidance who had seen Castillo, said he seemed to be upset by matters that are anything but secret or peculiar to him. It was all public information and all too common, she said.

“I’m afraid it’s all too typical of what goes on with families in general,” she said. “It’s a luxury if a family could find a way to come here intact. There’s such a loss. And there are problems with the people they’re living with here--generational problems. They’re older. He’s not been able to accomplish what his plans were here. He’s dirt broke. . . . It’s common.

“I run into things every day that tear my heart out and I’ll think, ‘This tops it,’ ” she added.

“This is a typical day here.”