Family Handles Disabled Guests With Care

James Long glided through the crowded lobby of the Sara Frances Hometel on Sunday, a plate of cookies in his hand and a butterfly on his neck.

Long, the unrivaled “Tattoo King” of the downtown single-room occupancy hotel, is a certified nursing assistant who sports 27 brilliant roses, eagles and butterflies on his upper body. But on Sunday, as many of the hotel’s 160 residents gathered for the annual Christmas party, Long was a full-time waiter, urging other guests to eat, drink and be merry.

“Eat now, worry later,” said Long, who will celebrate his second Christmas at the Sara Frances next week. Living on supplemental security income he receives for injuries he incurred in a car wreck, Long can afford only a small apartment at the hotel, where monthly rents run from $258 to $400. But Long said he belongs there, where he is needed.

“I help take people’s blood pressure, their pulse,” he said, looking around at the other guests, many of them physically or emotionally disabled, who are his neighbors. “They need more hotels like this, but they need also more people like the Reichbarts.”

The Reichbarts--Rocky and Frances and their children, Isa and David--own and run the hotel, which Rocky named after his wife. But by all accounts, the Sara Frances is much more than a family business--it’s literally an extended family, complete with Rocky’s 90-year-old mother, Minnie, living on the first floor. Hotel residents say the Sara Frances is a place where flaws are overlooked, problems are accepted and everyone belongs.

“A lot of people here have trouble connecting with other people,” said Donna Ferguson, 36, a former respiratory therapy technician. Ferguson has suffered from longstanding psychological problems, she said, but after more than a year at the Sara Frances, “I’ve started to relate to people here and I found a lot of people who really cared about me.”

Sheley Ohler, 51, who lives across from the Sara Frances in one of 34 federally subsidized apartments that the Reichbarts are renovating, put it this way: “You go up from here; you don’t go down.”

One of San Diego’s newest single-room occupancy hotels, or SROs, the Sara Frances was built on 10th Avenue on the ashes of the Keystone Hotel, which burned down in 1986. The rooms are tiny, but each one is designed with at least one window. Depending upon their means, some guests opt for showers and microwaves and televisions in their rooms, while others are glad for just a bed.

But as well as providing a room for the night, the Reichbarts help many of their residents make it through the day, cashing their disability checks and soothing their fears.

When Laura arrived at the Sara Frances, she had been living on the streets for four months. A tall young woman with distant eyes and closely cropped hair, Laura had spent much of her life in foster homes, the social worker told the Reichbarts. She trusted no one and refused to bathe.

“So I bribed her with Coke,” recalls Isa, a vivacious 23-year-old who left a budding career in fashion design to come work with her family. “I said, ‘If you take a bath, I’ll give you a soda.’ ”

Now, Laura, who pins her room keys to her blouse, takes regular baths, although sometimes Isa has to remind her. And Isa seems to have won a place in her heart. When Isa discovered that Laura clips photographs out of newspapers and calls them her family, Isa gave her pictures of the Reichbarts.

“Now she carries us around,” Isa said with a laugh.

Not all the Sara Frances’ residents are so troubled. Ninety-eight-year-old Milton Hillyer, for example, is a downtown institution, hawking newspapers at the corner of 5th Avenue and Broadway for 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday. Another resident recently performed in the opera at the Soviet Arts Festival, and several residents study at San Diego City College around the corner.

But many Sara Frances residents are unusual. One man calls himself simply Pluto 12L. Another former resident lit a bonfire in her room to have a barbecue. And another complained that alien invaders were coming down from the roof and into her window at night and leaving her bathroom door open. The Reichbarts responded by moving the woman from the fourth to the second floor, farther from the roof.

“People in SROs are often problem people. They’re on the streets because they have problems,” said Rocky, who says about half his guests are disabled in some way, including many who are recent residents of state mental hospitals. “But we like them. We’re living here with them. When I go home at night, I feel like I’m leaving my children.”

The residents are equally fond of him.

“Rocky and Fran have been like a family to me, like Mom and Dad,” said William Thomas, a Vietnam veteran who lived at the Keystone Hotel, and who was afraid of sirens for many months after it burned. “I was scared of fire trucks. I would run. But I’m better now.”

“A lot of people here don’t have money,” he added. “But Rocky makes sure they’ve got something. For Christmas he gave me a radio. Dad never forgets.”

Ferguson, the former respiratory therapist, credits the Reichbarts with introducing her to her boyfriend, Pete Maldonado, a 48-year-old deaf man who also lives at the hotel. She is now studying sign language and is teaching him to use her computer to communicate with his family.

Wesley Ealey, 34, has cerebral palsy and relies on disability payments to support himself and his wife, Mary, who is expecting a child. More than once, he said, the Reichbarts have given him the flexibility he needs to make ends meet.

“If you’re short on money at the end of the month and you don’t have no food, they lend you $10 till you get your check,” he said. “It saves you.”

Tommy Sawyer, a young man with kidney disease, has become a frequent interpreter for the hotel’s deaf residents. The son of two deaf parents, Sawyer says it’s the least he can do for the Reichbarts, who gave him a bigger room than he could afford just to accommodate the large machine he needs for his treatment.

“You just can’t beat them,” he said. “They’re willing to help you out, if it’s personal or legal or whatever. They make you feel real warm. This is home.”

Rocky, who has been known to pick up the tab after sending two amorous residents out on their first date, downplays his role in creating the hotel’s atmosphere.

“We don’t do nothing. We spend a few bucks,” he said, adding, “I have so much, a TV in every room, two VCRs. It’s incredible how much they need--and how little it takes to make a difference.”

“We let them start,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we don’t want them to pay. But it’s a break that somebody needs. And we’re making a living.”

At the in-house hotel store, Rocky has set up a layaway plan through which residents can buy everything from food to televisions--and thus experience what he calls the “pride of ownership,” some of them for the first time. He is also building a recreation room, complete with a billiard table and a videocassette player, for the residents’ use.

While most residents pay their bills on time, some owe the Reichbarts hundreds of dollars. Others have left without paying their bills--sometimes with a hotel television in hand.

Rocky is philosophical.

“Sometimes we lose,” he said. “But that’s part of the business expense. There are many rewards.”

Some of the best rewards, he says, are when his residents are able to save enough money to pay the deposits required to move into a real apartment. And that is the dream that many Sara Frances residents share.

“I’d like to have a real place to live, like you, like any American,” said Marsha Kollins, 33, who recently got a job sorting workers compensation claims for the county. “I’d like to get a car.” But, Kollins said, she’s going to be careful to save enough before she makes a move.

“The next level from here downwards is the street,” she said.

Long, the certified nursing assistant, agreed. His current room is so small that he’s had much of his Queen Anne style furniture in storage. Lately, he said, his 7-foot-tall Christmas tree has made for even a tighter squeeze.

“But even if I made enough to afford an apartment, I’d keep a room here,” he said. “So if I came back to visit I’d always have a place to stay.”