Odds & Ends Around the Valley

Coping Mechanism

The 14 kids sit in a circle symbolizing unity, high school students united by grief.

They are Saugus High School students who have recently had a parent or other close relative die.

For six weeks, one hour a week during the school day, these young people get together in this mutual support society aimed at venting their anger and grief.

The group facilitator is Ilene Blok, a Saugus High School counselor who lost her daughter several years ago to sudden infant death syndrome.

She has been conducting these six-week programs for seven years, since Linda Cunningham decided to go back to work full time. Cunningham, a Santa Clarita resident, founded the program, called Teen-Age Grief, in 1984 when two friends of her daughter lost parents and were emotionally incapacitated with shock and despair.

“There didn’t seem anywhere where they could get the kind of peer support that allows the healing process to continue after a loss,” Cunningham said.

According to the organization’s executive director, Arlene Anthony, the program Cunningham started at her neighborhood church has spread to 14 countries and is being implemented in the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles through schools, churches and other outreach groups.

Cunningham, who directs bereavement services for Kaiser Permanente at its Panorama City facility, recently completed a handbook for people who would like to start their own group.

“TAG was a program that just made sense,” Cunningham said. “Teen-agers are so vulnerable to stress.”

According to Anthony: “People are often nervous in the presence of a grief-stricken young person. They will say something like, ‘You will get over it; just think about something else.’ People, young people especially, have to work through their feelings. Trying to dismiss those feelings does not make them go away.”

Courthouse Boogie

These are hot times at the Van Nuys Courthouse.

The courtrooms have never been more full of those accusing and the accused.

But downstairs, in the basement, is a lunchtime oasis where cool jazz sounds soothe jangled legal nerves.

Bob Ringwald is the proprietor of the Courthouse Cafe and the convenience cafe on the first floor. His wife, Arlene, is the chef at the cafe and prepares the menu.

Ringwald, blind since age 10, is also the one dishing up the noontime noodles from his trusty upright.

Sometimes people listen.

Sometimes they don’t.

He plays for the ones who do.

“I play a lot of jazz, a little boogie and some standards,” Ringwald says. “Light stuff. I want to keep things pleasant and comfortable for every one.”

Sometimes his daughter, Molly, the movie star, comes in and requests songs, but mostly he plays whatever he wants.

Cry Baby

It’s not meant to be a birthday or holiday present, this new doll created by Betty Stahl of Castaic.

It has a smashed-in face, teary eyes and its body is flat, like a baby suffering from fetal-alcohol syndrome.

Stahl created the doll as a teaching aid for the Girl Scout troop she leads. Stahl made the doll, called a crack baby, to graphically portray what alcohol and drugs do to unborn and newborn children.

Now that she has made her point with the Scouts, Stahl has given the doll to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Substance Abuse and Narcotics Education program for use in its DARE program.

Overheard

“They said kids from Encino and Sherman Oaks were down in the city looting certain stores and rioting. I didn’t know their parents would let them have the Mercedes after 9 on a school night.”

--Waitress at Stanley’s in Sherman Oaks to two customers