Father, 7 Children in Motel Excited by Offers of Gifts

Bill Loyer was most excited Monday about the offer of a 1978 Chevy. The six girls and a boy that he has been raising alone in a cramped Costa Mesa motel room, however, think the trip to Disneylands is an even more exciting gift.

“Things are looking up,” said Loyer, who pays $200 a week for the room he shares with the children, ages 4 through 17. The two oldest are his estranged wife’s children by a different father.

The gifts offered by two men were among many offers of food, money and clothing after people learned that the 37-year-old bricklayer has been virtually trapped in the Ha’Penny Inn because he can’t afford first and last months’ rent deposits, much less a car or trip to an amusement park.

A Huntington Beach-based group called Mothers and Others Against Child Abuse (843-LOVE) contacted the media over the weekend in an effort to help the family, which for three years has been moving from motel to motel as managers discovered the family’s size and evicted them.

An affordable home in Orange County is the thing the Mothers group believes the family needs most.

Mothers founder Sally Nava Kanarek said there had been some offers of rentals outside Orange County but the children have moved so much since 1985 that they desperately need to remain at the Costa Mesa schools they are now attending--at least until summer.

Kanarek’s group learned of the Loyer dilemma six weeks ago when the man’s sister-in-law called volunteers to report that the children had been abandoned more than a year ago by their mother.