Crumbling Hopes : Rehabilitation Center for Disabled Threatened With Closure

The bullet that tore through Casey Dwight’s left arm seven years ago left a disfiguring scar and deadened his sense of touch, making it difficult for him to continue work as a machine operator.

After three years of unemployment Dwight found a job last September inside a wide brick building in South-Central Los Angeles. The 34-year-old works alongside 70 others with disabilities who are learning new jobs skills through the efforts of a small, nonprofit center called Epi-Hab, short for epileptic rehabilitation.

“This place was the last hope for me and a lot of other folks,” Dwight said. “The people pushed me to work and pulled me out of my shell.”

But now Dwight’s job as well as the jobs of his co-workers are threatened because the building where they work is not earthquake safe. Unless officials of the small center come up with $70,000 for city-ordered repairs, the facility and the 40-year-old rehabilitation program housed inside will be shut down.

Money Not Available

“This is serious. We simply do not have the money,” organization founder Frank Risch said Wednesday.

Since 1971, Epi-Hab has offered jobs to the disabled at its Western Avenue site, between Vernon and Slauson avenues. The organization began operating in 1949 to employ veterans with epilepsy, said Risch, who at the time was chief of epilepsy rehabilitation at the Veterans Administration Hospital in West Los Angeles.

Risch’s goal was to provide an understanding, but not sheltered, workplace where those with disabilities could gain confidence and learn new skills to work in private manufacturing jobs.

Only once did the organization accept government money--a $103,000 federal grant--to open its first home downtown, Risch said. Epi-Hab operates by soliciting work contracts from larger corporations and then offering those jobs to its employees.

In 1987, it contracted about $700,000 worth of electronic, mechanical and packaging assembly work from 15 companies.

“We are not subsidized because we feel it distorts the rehabilitation effort,” said Leon Beaulieu Jr., general manager of Epi-Hab. “We want people to know they are working real jobs and not receiving government handouts.”

Aircraft Contractors

Lockheed, Douglas Aircraft and Hughes Aircraft are longtime participants in the program, spokesmen from those firms said. Douglas contracted $50,000 worth of work in 1987 and so far this year has contracted $28,000, a spokesman said. Lockheed annually provides work for about 15 people and has hired Epi-Hab employees.

Most of the workers in the South-Central facility live in the surrounding neighborhood, although some drive from the San Fernando Valley and other suburban areas. In its 40 years of operation, the center has employed 4,000 people. Half of those have gone on to outside jobs, Risch said.

The organization’s troubles began in 1986 when Building and Safety inspectors found the 80-year-old building to be seismically unsound and the group was ordered to strengthen the unreinforced brick wall.

The Epi-Hab structure is just the kind of pre-1933 masonry building targeted by a tough 1981 Los Angeles earthquake safety ordinance. The law requires that these old buildings be reinforced. If owners do not comply, the city can order the building vacated.

“We look at the people inside these buildings,” said Art Perez, a supervising engineer in the Building Department’s earthquake safety division. “It’s their safety we are concerned about.”

The organization was granted an extension last December and must begin work by October. In issuing the extension, a city report described Epi-Hab as an organization that “provides needed services to the community,” but “financing can only be obtained by way of fund-raising.”

With five months left to start work, Risch and other officials are worried that they will not find the money for the repairs. Harold Brand, plant manager, pointed Thursday to the crumbling mortar between the bricks and a splintered beam as proof of the building’s need for repair.

“This has been the first job I can hold,” said Shelton, 35, adding that a nervous disorder had hindered her performance at other jobs. “The people here, they make you feel comfortable about yourself. You can work without worrying about what other people think of you.”