Riot Aftermath : Still Reaching Out : Aid: A free food distribution center, Project Reach, was burned out in the riots. The needy ask: Why?

Every fourth Saturday like clockwork, volunteers at the Project Reach food distribution center on Western Avenue would hand out free butter, cornmeal, canned fruit and other staples to the hungry.

There was one line for the elderly and the handicapped, another for women with children--some of whom began camping out as early as 5:30 a.m. waiting for the center to open its doors.

Funded by Hubert Cowart, a retired black aerospace worker, the program provided free food to more than 1,000 people a month, many of them Korean-Americans.

But today, all that remains of the warehouse at 51st Street and Western Avenue is a tangled mess of wrought iron and charred metal pipes with a for-sale sign posted out front. And those who came to depend upon the free food to tide their families over when cabinets were bare were left angrily pondering the same question: Why?

“I knew women who would have had to send their kids to bed hungry if they didn’t come here,” said Connie, 43, a mother of two who declined to give her last name. “They filled a real need in this community. Now where are people going to go?”

Cowart, 52, who had tapped his savings to run the food bank, struggled to make sense of the destruction Tuesday as he plucked charred cans of Carnation milk and coffee from the ashes.

Besides Project Reach, the two-story building housed a garment shop, a children’s clothing store, a beauty shop and a market. The occupants had been African-Americans, Latinos and Korean-Americans. Cowart believes the target of the burning was the market run by Korean-Americans.

“The way I see it, they didn’t burn my business down Thursday,” Cowart said. “They burned a friend of mine’s place down--a Korean who ran a market in the same building.”

Cowart, who worked as a hydraulics specialist in the aerospace industry for 34 years, and his wife, LaBlanche, 50, started out small about 20 years ago, giving away food from the garage of their Watts home. About 10 years ago, they set up shop in the rented warehouse on Western Avenue.

Without any outside financial assistance, the couple would scour the regional food banks and other social service agencies for food. Cowart estimates that it costs him thousands of dollars a year to keep the operation running.

“It’s not how much you give but what you give. You don’t have to be rich to help people,” Cowart said. “It’s just that instead of living in the Bahamas, we’re living in Watts.”

A fixture in the community for the last decade, Project Reach served people not only in Los Angeles, but Compton, Long Beach and surrounding areas. Every fourth Saturday, they came: elderly Korean-American women, Latinos, African-Americans and Anglos.

“We’d have flour, cornmeal, green vegetables, corn, peas string beans--just stuff for people to put on the shelves so they would have something to eat,” said Rosie Crump, a 69-year-old volunteer. “He never turned anyone away, regardless of race, color or creed.”

Robert Heroux, 41, who tries to earn a living working a variety of odd jobs, was one. But sometimes he just cannot make it. That was when he knew he could count on Project Reach.

“I would come here when I didn’t have no money,” said Heroux. “This man used to be here 24-7 trying to help people--giving them food. And look what they did.”

On Tuesday, Cowart returned to the gutted shell with a truckload of bread, which he distributes twice a week. He sat out front for most of the day handing out pumpernickel, hamburger rolls and bagels to the men, women and children who arrived by the dozens.

Some had been driving all day searching for free food at churches and other organizations.

When they saw the open truck chock-full of bread, car after car abruptly swerved over to the side of the road to ask if it was free.

They included a 38-year-old woman from South-Central Los Angeles who pulled up in a pickup truck. Shielding her 1-month-old foster daughter’s head from the sun, she sifted through the varieties of bread.

“We were just driving down the street trying to find a church that was giving out food,” said the woman, giving her name as Sandra. “We’re all a little short and we’re the only ones in our neighborhood with transportation so we’re getting stuff for the others, too.”

Viola Silvile, 75, a Project Reach volunteer who had stopped by to offer help, wondered where people will turn if Cowart is unable to reopen.

“There are a lot of people who are really in need and unless they can find someplace else to go, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Silvile said. “I told one lady the other day after I found out it had burned down: ‘Oh no, it’s all over.’ But then she said that knowing him, maybe he’ll eventually find some way of getting things back.”

But for now, the Cowarts are just taking one day at a time.

“Right now we’re working out of our trucks until we can hopefully get some money together and locate another building,” LaBlanche Cowart said.

“We’re going to have to start from the ground up . . . but we’re not going to roll over and play dead.”