Money Didn’t Buy Them Happiness : Lifestyle: Months after 31 O.C. homeless people won a settlement in sweeps case, few have found a better life.

Their joy could hardly be contained as they sat around the conference table talking to their attorneys last August. More than 30 homeless people had taken on the Santa Ana Police Department for arresting them on petty charges in a series of controversial Civic Center sweeps--and they had won.

Now they were going to receive roughly $11,000 each, and the two dozen or so who gathered that day had big plans for the money. Some hoped to spend it on permanent shelter so they could look for work. Others thought they could use it to reunite with lost relatives or to start new lives in places far away from Santa Ana.

“First, I am going to get a place to live, get some new clothes, maybe get a small car--something to get around in--and look for a job,” said Gregory Smith, a 32-year-old epileptic with a congenital spinal defect and a history of alcohol abuse. “At last, I can get a start on things.”

But as Smith and many of the others have discovered, the money offered precious few of its recipients a better life. Of the 31 plaintiffs who won $400,000 from the city, 11 are believed to be homeless again. Others are using up their last dollars living in motel rooms, and a handful disappeared without a trace.

For two, fate has been even crueler. Smith, for instance, had trouble leaving his old lifestyle. Nine weeks after the settlement, he suffered a seizure and was found dead in his Garden Grove motel room.

Another plaintiff, Clemente Ruiz, never saw the money at all. He died a week before the checks were distributed, shot point-blank by an unknown attacker.

And many of those who survived continue to wrestle with the same demons that made them homeless in the first place, afflictions that $11,000 cannot cure.

“A vast majority of them have a disease. They are sick with the disease of addiction,” said Jonathan Parfrey, a social worker who has seen many of the plaintiffs come back through the doors of the Orange County Catholic Worker seeking food and shelter.

“To give them that money,” he said, “was to hand someone who plays Russian roulette a revolver with six bullets in it.”

The word on the street and from those who work with the homeless is that only nine of the original plaintiffs made it “inside” and are attempting to put their money to good use, some in other parts of the country. One homeless man left California before the settlement was finalized and learned only recently, after being traced through the Social Security Administration, that he was owed the money.

“Everybody said: ‘The money is going to make you happy,’ ” said one of the plaintiffs who returned to the Civic Center within weeks. “But some people are still moving around, and they don’t seem happy to me.”

For some, the initial wave of good intentions was overwhelmed by the temptation.

According to a frequently repeated story, one homeless man treated his friends to a night in a limousine, looking for all the drugs his money could buy. Another plaintiff, 36-year-old Debra Burch, said she also celebrated in a luxury car.

“I had a couple of friends of mine and we went cruisin’ around Santa Ana, and we got drunk,” she said, laughing.

They also became prey for other homeless people who had not been part of the lawsuit against the city. After years of panhandling, the plaintiffs now were rushed by their friends as they walked across the Santa Ana Civic Center and pressured to share their money.

“A lot of these people wanted and wanted and wanted and wanted,” said one man who asked that his name not be used. “And sometimes, when you tell them you don’t have any, they think you are stuck up, or whatever.”

Pockets that were once stuffed with cash soon became empty.

Within days, a couple of men were back on the street, living in a parking garage in makeshift tents anchored by shopping carts. Others retreated to motel rooms--but never too far away from their friends--until they gradually returned.

Two men who received $22,000 each because they were physically abused by police during the raid in August, 1990, were among those who had difficulty adapting to a new lifestyle.

Sitting near his tent in the Civic Center, 33-year-old Harry Bull, who goes by the nickname “Dirty Harry,” said he never really left his “home.”

The money “was something that just happened. You had nothing from the beginning, so it was like a gift,” he said. “It was good for those that really wanted to get out.”

Even some who said they wanted a new life with the cash complained that it just wasn’t enough. Burch, who returned this week to the Civic Center with her dog, Rosie, said she wanted “out” but could not find a job.

After her celebration, Burch said she took a two-week trip to Missouri to see her two children. When she returned, she rented a room. She bought a used bed, television and a chest of drawers.

But Burch learned quickly that the $11,000 was not going to last forever. She bears some signs of her brief prosperity: She has a new set of clothes and freshly polished nails. But she worries that the money is running out.

“No job, no money to come back in,” she said. The money “sort of gave me a little peace and quiet for a while, but now I’m back out here because I can’t find a job.”

On the surface, at least, a few of the plaintiffs seem to have fared better.

Away from Santa Ana in a gated apartment complex last week, Norman Bell stretched across his living room floor on old sofa cushions and chain-smoked cigarettes as he spoke of his new life.

“I don’t want to be on the street,” he said. “I want to be here in a place where it does not rain on me. There’s a swimming pool out there, there’s a Jacuzzi, and I have fun. I can buy food, I don’t have to stand in line waiting for soup or a sandwich bag.”

But he still drinks, the 55-year-old Bell admitted. He has no job, and he has not looked for one.

Asked why he could rent an apartment when others could not, his apartment mate, Jonathan Williams, explained: “It’s the difference between having a $10-a-day habit and having a $300-a-day habit.”

Bell has also benefited from his victories in other court cases.

In addition to the most recent case, Bell was one of 14 homeless people who received about $3,000 each from the city in 1988 after park employees confiscated and discarded their bedrolls and other personal belongings. Bell also recently received $5,000 from a lawsuit against a Santa Ana restaurant that refused to serve him because he looked homeless.

There are a few cases, however, in which local social workers say they hope that plaintiffs have used their windfall to tackle problems that had dogged them all their adult lives.

Joe Arias, 23, had just completed a drug treatment program before receiving his check. He was reunited with his family, Parfrey said.

Orange County Catholic Worker also helped Domingo Sanchez, 32, leave the country. Afraid to stay in Orange County because of the money he had received, Parfrey said a volunteer drove Sanchez to Riverside to meet a bus that would take him to Mexico.

Crystal Sims, an attorney for Legal Aid Society of Orange County, said she also heard from one plaintiff who was reunited with his family after 23 years.

“He said he was surrounded by his whole family. He was crying, other people were crying,” Sims said. “It made him feel special that he was important to everybody.”

And a few of the plaintiffs even dug into their pockets to help those who had helped them when they were broke: In the weeks after the settlement, local charity organizations that provide food and shelter received modest donations from grateful plaintiffs who had once been clients.

Lawyers for the homeless people have wondered about the plight of their clients since the case concluded. But they also note that the case was fought to protest the actions of the Police Department, not to guarantee a new life for the plaintiffs.

Moreover, the homeless people who were the victims of the police action were entitled to use the money as they saw fit, lawyers said.

“If (the city) did it to you or me, they would have paid a lot more,” said Edmond M. Connor, one of the lawyers in the case. “The money the homeless got was not enough to start over a new life. This was to compensate them for a violation of their civil rights.”

Attorney Paul M. Roadarmel Jr., a member of the legal team that represented the homeless people without charge, said the case was rewarding because their clients appreciated the legal help. And attorney George L. Hampton IV called it “the single greatest accomplishments in our careers.”

But some observers remain disappointed.

Parfrey, for instance, had hoped that the settlement money would be used more productively--perhaps for drug and alcohol treatment and a “sober living center”--to cure the problems of the homeless.

“I was depressed when they got the money because I knew exactly where it was going,” Parfrey said. “They could have gotten some of these guys off of the street. . . . And now, they have got them right back in there because they did not deal with the reality of the disease.”