COUNTYWIDE : Teen-Ager to Enter Special Program

Eric Schimmel, the mentally retarded teen-ager who in August tried to walk to his Frazier Park home after being released from jail in Ventura, will finally enter a special education program, court officials said Tuesday.

Schimmel’s four-day disappearance after his release from jail, where he had been held on several misdemeanor charges pending a hearing, prompted the Sheriff’s Department to review its policy for releasing disabled inmates.

After his release, Schimmel, 19, walked 20 miles along California 126 to Fillmore, about a quarter of the 80-mile distance to his home in Frazier Park, a remote mountain community of 1,400 people on the Ventura County border with Kern County.

Deputies eventually found him in the parking lot of a Fillmore grocery store, where a confused Schimmel had kept a lookout for his parents’ car on the nearby freeway.

Because Schimmel has the mental capacity of a 5-year-old, prosecutors suspended charges of auto tampering, petty theft and trespassing and placed Schimmel in a program where he was to receive special education.

At a Municipal Court hearing Tuesday, mental health caseworkers reported that an agreement had been reached between Ventura and Kern counties to provide Schimmel with special education classes.

Beginning as soon as today, a bus will pick Schimmel up each morning and transport him 35 miles to a special education center in the Kern County town of Taft.

“The basic education program will allow him to later enter vocational training,” said Brenda Andrade, a deputy district attorney who attended the review hearing. “School will be very good for him.”

Andrade said the seven-month delay occurred while mental health officials from the Tri-County Regional Center in Ventura negotiated with their counterparts in the Kern Regional Center in Bakersfield over financial and management responsibility for Schimmel.

In the end, Ventura County agreed to pay for the treatment but share oversight over Schimmel’s case with the Kern County center.

Jeff Smith, Schimmel’s stepfather, blamed “bureaucratic mumbo jumbo” for the delay. But he said he and Schimmel’s mother are pleased that an agreement had finally been struck. With little to do at home, Schimmel has often been bored, he said.

Schimmel never mentions the four days that he was lost, an apparent effort to forget about the ordeal, Smith said.

Andrade said another court hearing has been set for September to review Schimmel’s progress. But Andrade said the system finally seems to be working. “This is a story with a happy ending, so far,” she said.