Thanks to Whittier Quake, Day-Care Center Has Home

Mariachis played. Children danced. A politician spoke. And everyone thanked the earthquake.

The people who live around Vernon Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles gathered Saturday to celebrate the opening of a new day-care center.

Organizers said that if it weren’t for the 5.9-magnitude Whittier earthquake two years ago, the David Roberti Child Development Center might never have been built.

The new center replaced an old one--previously called La Promesa--that had been making do in slightly cramped quarters that it shared with the All People’s Christian Church on 20th Street downtown. The quake of Oct. 1, 1987, left the building unsound and the center searching for a new home.

The two-year odyssey--which included temporary stops at a church gymnasium, a warehouse and a pair of abandoned homes--ended Saturday when state Sen. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) cut the ribbon on the new center that bears his name.

“I think it’s very much like the Phoenix rising from the ashes,” said Marilyn Prosser, director of the statewide organization that operates the center and 17 others. “The earthquake pushed us to do something much sooner.”

Private donors who asked to remain anonymous gave $600,000 to the foundation that runs the centers to pay for the property and construction costs.

The new center stands out like an oasis on a stretch of Vernon Avenue south of downtown that is lined with grimy radiator shops, carpet remnant stores and battered apartments. The Spanish-style building is surrounded by a well-tended lawn, sandboxes and children’s play equipment.

Spanish-speaking mothers said their children can hardly wait to attend the center, which is expected to pass final inspection within the next two weeks--the last hurdle before it can open.

One hundred children ages 2 to 6 will receive Montessori instruction there. Enrollment is free to most of the low-income parents, immigrants from Mexico and Central America who typically work in the garment district.

“They keep asking me when the school will open,” Corina Cordova said of her children. “They even want to come on weekends.”

Cordova and her husband, Fernando, both 29, came to California from Guatemala nine years ago. She works as a seamstress in the garment district and he is employed by a furniture factory in Montebello.

“I feel so good because my children are getting such a chance,” Corina Cordova said. “Anyone would be envious of what they are getting here.”