SOS Criticizes Statements by Resident Foes

Talk about beating a dead horse! The recent letter by Janice Davidson, president of Save Our Neighborhood, repeats the same charges we’ve heard for more than a year.

They have won. Share Our Selves is moving from Rea Center. What more do they want? Why continue to stir up animosities? Is it perhaps that they don’t want SOS to continue anywhere?

We have deliberately not answered recently published distortions and half-truths because we felt the mere reference to the charges gives unwarranted attention to them. However, the continued attacks in the press through the Letters section is now jeopardizing our move to Superior Avenue, and we feel we must respond.

We challenge the truth of at least three statements in Ms. Davidson’s most recent letter. The man whose nose was sliced was not in line for food at SOS He was wounded in the park around 3:30 after we had closed. The fight last month lasted scant minutes. There were approximately 20 (not 80) sick people, many of them children, waiting for the clinic to open. They hardly could have intervened. No doctor came out of the clinic because no doctor was as yet at the clinic.

The same neighbor who reportedly “attended” to the victim has refused for more than a year to come while SOS is in session to meet our clients so she would not fear them. We might point out two such fights in nine years at Rea Center are regrettable, but not overwhelming evidence of danger.

We submit that these few examples are symptomatic of the many distortions that have surrounded SOS in the last year and a half. We hope that our new neighbors will not believe them and will give us a chance to prove we can be an acceptable addition to their neighborhood.

As for the West Side of Costa Mesa having all the social services--hasn’t Save Our Neighborhood heard of the county’s welfare department, mental health and drug and alcohol programs on the East Side? And what about the many group homes in Mesa del Mar, Mesa North and, yes, even Mesa Verde?

JEAN FORBATH

Member, SOS Board of Directors