‘We have one goal and that is to reduce alcohol and drug problems.’

Upstairs in the big community building in the All Saints Episcopal Church complex in downtown Pasadena, over in a corner beyond the renovations-in-progress, Francisca Neumann, in her cubbyhole, is on the phone.

She is talking, persuading, wheedling, cajoling, one cog in the motley coalition that makes up Day One, of which she is executive director. On this afternoon, this particular cog is concerned about who will get credit--and top billing--for a project.

It is important both to Day One and to the cog, because both depend on grants. Donors, be they government, corporate or individual, like to see certified, proven results.

They compromise: shared credit. Another small fire doused. And Neumann, 50 and stylish in a bright red dress and print shawl, emerges from the cubbyhole to a comfortable parlor at All Saints to talk about the conflagration: Substance Abuse.

First on the agenda: “We all have to acknowledge our complicity. . . . People have to stop pointing up to the Northwest and saying it’s Northwest and it’s black and it’s crack,” she said, referring to the area of Pasadena generally considered to be home to most of the city’s drug and gang problems.

“People look at gangs and say the problem is there. No. The problem is here. . . . It’s a substance abuse problem, and it’s all over.”

Enter, not quite three years ago, Day One. Day One does not do enforcement or treatment or education, but it brings the people who do those things--police, community leaders, counselors, schools--together.

Those involved in Day One like to call it a facilitator. That’s rather a New Age, ‘90s kind of term for middleman, linking problem and solution much as a grocery store links supply and demand.

Back in 1987, Day One was born in what co-founder Denise Wood calls a propitious time. It grew out of a number of efforts, including Wood’s social work for All Saints’ Office for Creative Connections and the city of Pasadena’s Toward 2000 Committee.

All Saints rector George Regas asked Wood to find out what life was really like in Pasadena. Now retired and living in Kennett Square, Pa., Wood recalls that one of her most important findings was how drugs were affecting men, women, children, families. And while there were courts and treatment centers, there was no organized, communitywide response.

As Wood put it: “Having a rally to Just Say No in the Rose Bowl is not really effective. . . . To ask little kids to say no, and not have the adults working too, what’s the point?”

So a meeting was set up, with important people. The mayor. The city manager. The schools superintendent. Religious leaders. The police chief. And, says Neumann, they all were receptive to the idea of Day One.

The Pasadena Unified School District gave office space. The Police Department loaned its grant writer. Neighborhood meetings where, as Wood put it, “the police and neighborhood people could begin to trust each other again,” were held. A board was named.

The city of Pasadena and Los Angeles County provided funding; Kaiser Permanente awarded a grant that runs through 1991. Day One was approaching day two.

Earlier this month, 150 met at a downtown hotel to map out 1990 goals. “We have one goal and that is to reduce alcohol and drug problems,” Neumann, a recovering alcoholic who talks freely about her own struggle with substance abuse, told the group.

Toward that end, Day One will undertake a number of projects. One is a prevention program for all public, private and parochial schools in Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre for the 1990-91 school year. A survey will go out shortly to all the schools, to help determine the extent of the problem.

Another goal is increasing neighborhood involvement. One way that will be done is at a community drug awareness rally, in April in the Northwest.

If that sounds a bit like the discredited Just Say No, Ibrahim Naeem, director of the Pasadena-Foothill branch of the Los Angeles Urban League and a Day One board member, is quick to explain how it’s different.

The Day One rally, he says, is “mainly to get in the public eye. It makes this a public situation, tells the young people that here we are, taking a visible stand against it, because sometimes, silence is consent.

“It also helps demonstrate the severity of the problem to those people who are denying it exists. . . . And it’s done by people who live and deal with the problem.”

How effective can such a rally--and for that matter, a “facilitator” like Day One--be?

“With the magnitude and pervasiveness of the drug problem, any organization will have limited effect,” says Naeem, who lives in Northwest Pasadena. “But we realize this is not a sprint, we’re in a marathon. We need sustained effort over a period of time to address root causes.

“Part of the problem is that as pervasive as drug abuse is, there’s still a tremendous denial that it exists, even in the African-American community, where there is crisis. That’s the kind of attitude that has to be dealt with. . . . People who have the wherewithal can’t be in their ivory towers while the castle is on fire. They have to be down with the bucket brigade.”