Canyon ‘Family’s’ Uncertain Future : Porterville: Residents threatened with eviction are pinning their hopes on ranch’s namesake, Sam Porter.

The tiny makeshift community of Porterville has survived floods, windstorms, the Great Indian Trail fire of 1980, long periods without electricity or water and countless other deprivations for nearly 12 years.

But these days, an air of fearful uncertainty grips the 160 residents of Sam Porter’s Trabuco Highlands Ranch.

While children still shriek with laughter while racing on their bikes along the endless bumpy dirt roads, their parents wonder and worry about how long they will have a home.

County authorities have ordered Porterville dismantled, citing various zoning, health and fire code violations that they allege make the ramshackle community of travel trailers and homemade cabins unfit to live in.

The residents have been handed eviction notices which come due on Thursday. Yet none of the 50 or so mostly poor, immigrant families seems to have any desire to leave.

“It shouldn’t be up to the county how we’re living out here,” said Leone Morena, 24, who has lived for six years in a small Porterville trailer in the shadow of Santiago Peak and with commanding views of Trabuco Creek. “It’s like camping, but we have bathroom facilities, beds, stoves, refrigerators, everything that anyone else has only more space.”

“The county wants us to leave but they are not going to pay our rent,” added Angel Castaneda, 31, a foreman at nearby Sakaida Nursery who, with his wife and two children, has also lived in Porterville for six years. “It’s logical, if the county wants us to leave they should help to relocate us.”

Morena and her husband pay $120 monthly rent; Castaneda, $90. Rents that hover near $100 are a big part of Porterville’s appeal to these low-income families, not to mention convenience for many of the residents who work at the adjacent nursery.

If forced out, those workers fear they will lose their jobs because many of them have no means of transportation.

So, reminiscent of the great flood of 1979, when the Trabuco Creek bridge washed out and supplies had to be airlifted in to the ranch, Porterville’s residents are waiting this one out, their hopes pinned on the community’s namesake, Sam Porter, a man equally in trouble.

County prosecutors have charged him with five misdemeanor counts of zoning and fire code violations, which carry a maximum penalty of six months in jail for each count plus possible fines.

A trial date is set for March 5, even though prosecutors would not deny that charges might be dismissed if Porterville is closed. But having issued the eviction notices and taken tentative steps toward relocating “his family,” Porter now is not so sure that he will carry out their forced removal.

“I think my best interests might be served by going to trial,” he said recently. “I don’t think they could find 12 jurors to convict me. Considering the humanitarian and Christian aspects, I don’t think they could make a case.”

County prosecutors, environment and fire officials, Porterville residents past and present and anyone else familiar with the Porterville saga will not be surprised at the latest stance taken by the 63-year-old contractor and rancher, who is nothing if not mercurial.

His approaching trial is only the most recent of a series of long-running disputes with county officials, developer William Lyon, the Trabuco Canyon Water District and local politicians--and Porter seems to thrive on it all.

A vocal critic of local government and its handling of development in the county (he ran an unsuccessful campaign against Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez in 1988 and served a term on the Trabuco Canyon Water District board), Porter charges that he has been targeted for complaints because of his politics and outspokenness.

“The (county) supervisors are a bunch of overgrown toads who hop and croak whenever a developer waves his wand,” said the colorful Porter, who likes to compare himself to Stonewall Jackson, a Civil War general known for willingly exposing himself to Union army gunfire.

County officials have long denied Porter’s charges. William Grant, enforcement manager for the county Environmental Management Agency who has been trying for years to shut down Porterville, was on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

“The thing that disappoints the most is that this was a family for me,” Porter said, surveying the nearly 240 acres of rolling hills dotted with cactus, majestic coastal oaks and eucalyptus that make up his ranch.

He points to a trailer high on a bluff shaded by a thicket of swaying eucalyptus trees about 35 feet high, and observes that they were planted by the tenant nearly 12 years ago.

In one move to comply with county regulations, he gave the three enclaves that make up Porterville addresses and street names--Lyon Plaza, Supervisor Area and Goner Road (as in they’re all goners)--all a play on the alleged harassment aimed at him.

But Porter himself has faced criticism that he is exploiting his so-called family, profiting from the rents he charges, while subjecting tenants to deplorable living conditions.

Porter counters that he and his wife, Jeanne, a teacher at the nearby Joplin Boy’s Ranch, live no better than anyone else.

He shows a visitor a newly installed pump designed to transport water to residents at higher elevations on the ranch, including his own self-built, barn-like home.

He points out the wooden skeleton of a shower stall that was to be built for women and children but was abandoned when his legal troubles grew. He also exhibits photographs of the residents gathered on picnic benches taking English lessons he paid for.

Nevertheless, Porter acknowledges that he is banking that the county will shy away from a likely flood of outrage prompted by forcing people from their homes and the disruption in the lives of Porterville children.

Latino community leaders have already expressed concern:

“Because these people have been there for such a long time, they are settled . . .” said Lilia Powell, chairwoman of the Orange County Coalition for Immigrants Rights. “If we evict them without giving them assistance, we are talking about possibly loosing jobs.”

Officials at Trabuco Elementary School, which is attended by about 12 Porterville children, said they began contacting local Catholic parishes for assistance when they learned of the evictions earlier this month.

“Any time a child is removed from their home it causes problems,” said Principal Sondra Morrow. “I think the children, for the most part, have found a warm, accepting, challenging environment here at the school.”

Morrow agreed that Porterville does not provide the best of living conditions for the children. “But it is all relative to what you are used to,” she said.

“We have done some home visits and some of the parents have come to visit us,” Morrow went on. “Without placing any blame on anyone, we do have some concerns, especially when the children talk about not having enough water, but we are also concerned about the evictions. We visualize our children and wonder where they will be.”

Porter alleges that the county’s actions are discriminatory and partly designed to harass his mostly Latino tenants.

He said he is writing to U.S. Sens. John Seymour (R-Calif.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Texas). Porter thinks that Jack Kemp, secretary of housing and urban development, who intervened when the city of Costa Mesa tried to regulate undocumented workers, also might take an interest in their plight.

Beside the appeals to politicians, Porter revealed one more ace up his sleeve. He has become a minister in the Universal Life Church and says he plans to make Porterville an official church activity, his tenants parishioners and their rents church donations.

“Then it becomes a little more sacrosanct,” he said.

And is Porterville still likely to exist as a community a month from now?

“Yes. Hell you know me,” he chuckled.