The County Line Is No Barrier in Crisis : * Orange County’s Response to L.A. Riots Reflects Its Maturity as an Urban Area

Orange County too often gets portrayed in stereotyping as a place removed by light-years from its neighbor Los Angeles. In that characterization, Orange County is a “square” and almost entirely white enclave, very consciously removed from the L.A. scene, and a place whose very act of sprawling was seen as a kind of cultural counterrevolution to the perceived failings of its northern neighbor.

But as much as people did move to Orange County to escape crime and fear, we have learned in the past few years that the place to which people have come itself has been transformed into an increasingly urbanized suburb, with a host of nationalities represented in the teeming barrios and in the housing tracts that have spread out to supplant the old agricultural fields. And in the past week, we have seen something quite heartening affirmed; that is, that the county line with Los Angeles has proven to be no menacing barrier at all in a real crisis.

In recent days, Orange County residents have come forward in droves to gather relief supplies for Los Angeles in the wake of the riots. These efforts have sprung from the diverse churches and organizations that reflect the new makeup of the county.

From Calvary Chapel of Santa Ana went 25 truckloads of food and clothing last week. The Orange County Community Development Council of Costa Mesa delivered 35,000 pounds of food, mostly infant formula, to the riot area a week ago. South Coast Community Church in Irvine put out a call for donated goods one day, and two days later filled two moving vans with canned goods, bread, pasta, diapers and other items. Youngsters in the Laguna Beach Unified School District collected blankets, paper products, clothing and other items.

Moreover, the county’s emergency resources were made available, with nearly 500 county-based firefighters and law enforcement officers going for duty in Los Angeles. They lent a hand and endured some of the same hostility encountered by L.A. firefighters.

Orange County is not all that removed, though separated by an hour’s freeway ride from downtown Los Angeles. It has its own multicultural composition, and wrestles with many of the same problems of poverty, alienation, and gangs while it has, for better or worse, come of age.

The response during this past week reflected a recognition of a welcome sensibility that Southern California--its failings or achievements, its hopes, its fate--increasingly is one.