Help Arrives for Injured, Homeless Mother and Child

Gwendolyn Leopolo arrived in Orange County this month with about $5 in her pocket, no job and a missing husband. Her grown daughter put her up for a couple of days, but the daughter’s boyfriend made her leave.

And then, just when things seemed like they couldn’t get any worse, they did. As Leopolo and her youngest daughter walked from their homeless shelter in Tustin to a supermarket two weeks ago, a woman making a left turn struck them with her car, shattering Leopolo’s left elbow and crushing 6-year-old Amanda’s left leg.

Now, the little girl lies in a body cast, and she will be immobilized for 10 weeks. Mother and daughter have no home to return to, and even little battles have been all too easily lost: While the two of them were recovering in the hospital, someone broke into their room at the shelter and stole the Barbie dolls that Amanda got for Christmas.

Most tragically, however, the little girl’s father is still missing at a time when his family needs him most.

“I miss him,” Amanda said Thursday. “He’s in jail. I know it. I know about my daddy.”

Tears welled in Gwendolyn Leopolo’s eyes as her daughter spoke. “I try not to cry around her,” she said. “I’m trying to be strong for her. She and her daddy are very close. They’re inseparable.”

Leopolo, 40, does not believe her husband is in jail, nor does she think he has deserted the family. They have been married for seven years, she said, and Manatu Leopolo, a native of the Pacific island kingdom of Tonga who has lived in the continental United States since 1981, has never wandered away from his family.

The family had come to Orange County from San Bernardino in January so that Manatu Leopolo could take a job with a local pool company.

Manatu Leopolo, 33, called his wife on Jan. 1 to say that he had finished a pool job in Victorville and was hitchhiking home. He never showed up, and no one has heard from him since.

“I think Immigration probably got him,” Leopolo said. “He doesn’t have a green card, but he’s legal because we’re married and we have her (Amanda).”

Carol Bara, a public information officer for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said a computer check reveals no trace of Manatu Leopolo, indicating that he probably has not been picked up. Deportation, she added, would be unlikely unless Leopolo had agreed to pay his own way, since Tonga is so far away.

As a result, Manatu Leopolo would probably still be in detention if he had been apprehended. INS, however, has no record of him being held, Bara said.

That leaves Gwendolyn Leopolo with no clues and a handful of headaches.

For the past two weeks, Amanda and her mother have lived at the Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where they were taken after the car accident. But they have recovered sufficiently to be released from the hospital, and Thursday it came time for the mother and daughter to fend for themselves.

“I can’t do it alone,” Leopolo said as the two gathered their things in the hospital room. “There’s no way I can even lift her. Not with one arm.”

Leopolo’s family has been of little help--one sister-in-law has chipped in, but her parents disowned her, she said, when she married Manatu. “They don’t like the color of his skin,” she said. “It’s too black.”

To their rescue has come a hastily assembled coalition of private companies and social service agencies. Irvine Temporary Housing has arranged for them to stay at the Embassy Suites in Irvine for 10 days; the hotel is donating a room. The Irvine Assn. of Realtors has chipped in a VCR and a Nintendo game to keep Amanda occupied, and other local agencies have given shoes, food and other amenities.

“They called us, and we jumped on it immediately,” said Clyde Weinman, executive director of Irvine Temporary Assistance, a social service agency that provides emergency assistance to homeless people while still trying to “let them maintain their dignity.”

With the organization’s aid, mother and daughter say they will be able to get by, at least for a while.

Leopolo has also begun receiving federal assistance, and the money will help make ends meet while the two recover. Leopolo said she needs an operation to heal her elbow.

“This has been like total devastation,” she added. “But I think we’re going to make it with all these people helping us.”

Then she pauses: “I sure hope we can find my husband, though. We need him.”