The Plight of SOS Center in Costa Mesa
When Maria Bird, a five-year volunteer for SOS, said, “Welcome to gorgeous Orange County, home of the heartless,” we well understood the bitterness that filled her heart at the thought of men, women and little children left to hunger, sicken and, in many cases, die.
Some 200,000 in all die each year, not in darkest Africa, not in poverty-stricken India, but here in Orange County, surrounded by wealth, millionaires and even billionaires in this illusionary Garden of Eden.
Is this what “Greed is Good!” leads to? Don’t we realize that the hardening of the heart leads to hardening of the arteries? When the wellsprings of compassion dry up in a wealthy country, that bodes no good for any of us. As Rusty Kennedy of the Orange County Human Relations Commission stated about the destruction of this 18-year-old oasis of help for the poor, “ . . . it will be a major tragedy for poor people and all people in Orange County.”
SYLVIA EASTON
Chairwoman of Irvine Task Force
for the Homeless
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