Armenian Community Helps Its Own Adjust to Life in the U.S. : Immigrants: Relief group has built a reputation assisting newcomers with all aspects of life in this country.

A steady stream of people files in and out of a small, low-slung house on Glenoaks Boulevard in Glendale each day, leaving some passersby curious as to what goes on inside.

Though unprepossessing, the building is well known, not only to its visitors, but to people living more than 7,000 miles away in Armenia, one of the Soviet Union’s breakaway republics.

The building is the headquarters of the Armenian Relief Society Social Services, the largest organization in Los Angeles County helping primarily Armenian refugees and immigrants.

On any given morning, the cramped ARS lobby, big enough for a receptionist’s desk and six metal folding chairs, is thronged with immigrants who need help adjusting to life in the United States, whether it’s learning English, getting job training or filling out forms for residency cards or food stamps. Some merely want to look at the lobby bulletin board in hopes of finding work, a place to live--possibly even a mate.

Even before they moved to the United States, many of the immigrants had heard about the office, known as the Armenian Center back in Armenia, from friends and relatives writing from the Los Angeles area.

One such person is Metaksiya Agaronyan, 28. On a recent morning, she was desperate to see the social worker who could help with an immigration problem. Agaronyan and her husband were issued incorrect alien registration numbers after they left Armenia and could not resolve the problem themselves because they speak only rudimentary English. Without valid numbers, their welfare benefits could be cut off.

Although Agaronyan was worried, she believed that the ARS would take care of her, as it had not long before when an ARS social worker got the telephone company to remove a sizable charge mistakenly billed to her.

Finally, Agaronyan and her husband were called in to see social worker Lena Karagueuzian, who filled out the requisite forms and assured Agaronyan that valid registration numbers would be forthcoming.

“How grateful I am to you,” Agaronyan said. Minutes later her husband appeared with a few roses in a glass vase.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Karagueuzian said. “It’s my job to help you and I do it with pleasure.”

Day in and day out, this is the scene at the ARS’ Glendale office, where 17 Armenian-speaking social workers, most of them immigrants themselves, ease the transition that refugees and immigrants have to make from the old country to their new world.

There are an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 Armenians among the 250,000 refugees who have settled in Los Angeles County in recent years, said Joan Pinchuk, who heads the county’s Office of Refugee Assistance. Refugees, categorized by the U. S. government as people fleeing from persecution and life-threatening circumstances, qualify for welfare benefits and other services. The thousands of other immigrants who have entered the United States in recent years do not receive those benefits.

With language and cultural differences setting most immigrants apart from the American mainstream, local governments rely on ethnic community organizations such as the ARS to introduce newcomers to the facts of American daily life.

“They’re in Moscow one day and L. A. the next. It’s a different lifestyle they have to get used to here,” Pinchuk said. “They don’t know our ways.”

Pinchuk was not surprised to hear that a refugee from Armenia had asked ARS psychologist/counselor Levon Jernazian, “When are they going to give me an apartment?”

“It’s understandable because in the Soviet Union the government subsidizes housing, so some people feel they are owed it when they get here,” Pinchuk said. “Someone has to explain to them how it works in the United States.”

ARS Social Services Director Sona Zinzalian recalled how one immigrant woman was too scared to take her 3-year-old son to the hospital after he burned himself with cooking oil. “The woman said she had no money to pay the hospital,” Zinzalian said. But “a neighbor saw the boy and made the woman call us. We called the paramedics and then explained to the woman that she can get almost-free medical care.”

Pinchuk believes ethnic community organizations offer immigrants the best help because the staff members generally speak their clients’ language and share their culture.

At the ARS, students in Alice Vartabedian’s introductory-level English-as-a-second-language class are taught not only the ABCs of the English alphabet but also the 1-2-3s of getting by in Los Angeles. They learn about crime prevention, earthquake preparedness, legal rights, fax machines and a host of other how-tos and what-to-dos. During “talk time,” they discuss current events in English.

“There’s more social work involved here than just teaching. They’re learning about life here,” Vartabedian said.

“Even sorting through the mail is very difficult and often frightening” for the newly arrived, said Marian Aguilar, senior analyst for the city of Los Angeles’ Human Services and Neighborhood Development division, which distributes a federal social services grant.

On one occasion, Agaronyan, the woman with the wrong alien registration number, discarded an important notice from the telephone company because, she said, “you get so much advertising and useless stuff in the mail you just want to throw it all away.”

ARS social workers and English instructors often have to urge clients to open checking accounts because they know that immigrants from Armenia and the Middle East are accustomed to carrying large amounts of cash, a practice that in this country makes them easy prey for muggers.

Despite all the difficulties, Pinchuk gives the ARS high marks for achieving its goal of getting newcomers on their feet.

“The ARS is very in touch with the community,” she said. “They’re in the trenches, they know how to relate to and attract clients. They have the capacity to attract volunteers, which is very important.”

The ARS, founded in 1910 as an international women’s service organization, entered the realm of social services in 1979, after a wave of Armenian emigres from the Soviet Union and strife-torn Lebanon and Iran started arriving in Los Angeles.

“ We have to help our immigrants become self-sufficient,” said Director Zinzalian.

That they do. In the 1990-91 fiscal year, the organization provided help to nearly 13,000 refugees and other immigrants at offices in Glendale, Pasadena, Hollywood and Montebello.

About half of the ARS budget for social services--expected to top $500,000 in the 1991-92 fiscal year--comes from the federal grant Pinchuk’s office distributes to 25 private, nonprofit organizations serving refugees from countries experiencing unrest.

Other grants from the cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena and Glendale, where an estimated 50,000 residents--or more than a quarter of the Glendale-area population--are Armenian, enable the ARS to help immigrants and offer a host of other services. These include assistance to the elderly in the way of in-home visits and telephone reassurances as well as counseling and client advocacy for low- and moderate-income individuals.

The ARS’ menu of social services has recently extended to domestic issues, as immigrants go to the organization asking for advice on how to get free legal aid. Social worker Parik Nazarian gets many calls from immigrants who want to leave their spouses, although many are just reacting to an argument the night before, she has found.

Nazarian’s modus operandi is: “If I let the applications for legal aid fall behind and they keep calling, I know they’re serious. But sometimes they file, do some serious thinking and never call again.”

She recalled how one couple reunited just as their divorce was to become final. “Now they’re doing very well.”

Divorce cases can be depressing for Nazarian and her colleagues, many of whom are single Armenian women, but the social workers at the ARS manage to maintain cheery dispositions. Receptionist Annette Megerdoumian keeps the mood light.

One recent afternoon, she was telling co-workers how a short, bespectacled man named Boris wanted to place a personal ad--he was looking for a wife--on the bulletin board. As he read some of the other ads to figure out how to word his, he asked a woman standing next to him for help. One thing led to another and soon they were outside, pen and paper in hand, exchanging phone numbers.

“This is the love connection,” one of Megerdoumian’s colleagues quipped.

The ARS receives all types of requests for assistance, some that they consider outrageous. Recently, two elderly sisters called and unabashedly asked that someone find a husband for one of them because they couldn’t speak English well and couldn’t make ends meet financially. Another person asked Megerdoumian for a list of motels in Las Vegas. Callers with such requests get a polite “we can’t help you” for an answer, although the ARS always tries to respond to requests that are in their bailiwick.

The Glendale Police Department counts on ARS Social Services to disseminate information to the city’s Armenian-speaking population. The ARS recently helped translate into Armenian an anti-crime coloring book and a brochure on crime prevention.

“They’re a superb, dedicated group of people,” said Mario Yagoda, spokesman for the Glendale Police Department. “We go to them whenever we need anything from the Armenian community.”

A mother of two, Zinzalian smiles when the ARS is compared to a dedicated mom who is always around to help.

“That’s us,” Zinzalian says.