Deputies Find Cellular Phones No Status Symbol : Communications: A mountain work camp relies on the costly, frustrating devices. But that may change.

Cellular telephones are as much a part of the California lifestyle as salad bars and surfboards. And in today’s world of high-tech gadgetry, they qualify as a status symbol of sorts.

But for the Ventura County sheriff’s deputies who run the Rose Valley Work Camp in the Los Padres National Forest north of Ojai, cellular phones are more than a luxury.

Because deputies at the remote camp haven’t been able to get regular telephone service, they have relied on one office cellular phone and two mobile phones to stay in touch with the outside world--at a cost to the county of about $550 a month.

The calls are not only expensive, but sheriff’s officials say the cellular phones are also unreliable. Sometimes calls don’t go through the rugged hills that surround the camp. And when they do, the caller often gets an earful of static.

Assistant Sheriff Richard Bryce joked that the department has even considered switching to a less conventional mode of communication: carrier pigeons.

The days of cellular phones may be numbered at Rose Valley. Pacific Bell is planning to install a microwave relay station nearby that will allow the work camp to have regular phone service by early August.

The camp, which opened about two years ago, is a minimum-security jail that offers job training and substance-abuse programs. Nineteen sheriff’s employees run Rose Valley like a military boot camp with early-morning reveille and daily bunk bed inspections.

The 10-acre camp was built in 1954 by the U.S. Navy as a Seabee training base. After it was vacated years later, the Sheriff’s Department renovated it and turned it into a camp that can accommodate 125 inmates.

Located among rolling hills in the scenic national forest, Rose Valley is one of many such camps that are gaining popularity with corrections departments across the country.

But the biggest complaint from both prisoners and deputies has been the lack of adequate phone service.

Four recent attempts to call the camp were unsuccessful. “The mobile customer you are trying to reach is away from the car or beyond our service area. . . ,” a recording said.

A deputy explained later that weather plays a key role in cellular communications. “Maybe you should try when the weather clears up,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Said Bryce: “The cellular phones are very intermittent. It may or may not work. You can call six times and not get through or you could be right in the middle of a call and it will cut out.”

Undersheriff Larry Carpenter said the deputies at the camp use two-way radios to talk with other deputies around the county. But because of crowded radio frequencies, the deputies are not allowed to use the radios for lengthy conversations, he said.

“Even radio communication is sketchy at best,” Carpenter said.

The county government has 140 cellular telephones assigned to its employees at an annual cost of about $80,000. The three phones at Rose Valley generate the county’s largest charges per phone, said George Mathews, the county’s director of information services.

He said Pacific Bell has received approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to install microwave service for the Rose Valley camp. Mathews said the only thing holding up the project is a license from the Federal Communications Commission, which he expects to get by August.

He said the installation of regular phone service should save the county thousands of dollars each year in cellular phone bills.

Kathleen Flynn, a spokeswoman for Pacific Bell, said Rose Valley has never had regular phone service. She said the only place in the area the company will provide phone service to is the camp and a pay phone that has been installed outside nearby.

She said there are only six or seven households in the valley.

The phone company has been trying to provide service for the work camp since it opened, Flynn said, but has been delayed by the PUC’s long approval process.

“They consider it a special, unusual case,” she said.