Rescue Mission Faces Uncertain Future After Devastating Blaze

The Ventura County Rescue Mission, which has helped thousands of transients overcome alcohol and drug addiction during the last 20 years, faced an uncertain future Monday, a day after the 68-bed shelter burned down.

The American Red Cross has agreed to keep an emergency shelter open at the Oxnard High School gym until tonight for the 51 transients who were at the shelter when the blaze broke out shortly after midnight Sunday, said Carol Roberg, associate director for the mission. On Wednesday, the men will be moved to the First Baptist Church in Oxnard for one night.

Beyond that, Roberg said, “we have no idea. We’re trying the best we can.”

Mission officials said they would speed up the renovation of a three-bedroom house that they had intended to open in September as a women’s shelter. But the house, located next to the burned building, will not be ready for at least two weeks, and it can house only 12 to 15 people, officials said.

Mission and Oxnard officials have also discussed using vacant land that the mission owns on 6th Street to house the homeless in temporary structures such as tents, Quonset huts or trailers, said Sal Gonzalez, the city’s housing director.

To erect any of those dwellings, the mission would have to get a permit from the city. Gonzalez said he has promised to make the permit application process as quick as possible.

“The resources are what are at issue now,” Gonzalez said. “They had a pretty catastrophic fire. And they don’t have a whole lot of time.”

Established as the Oxnard Rescue Mission in 1972, the mission has provided free meals to the homeless and its rehabilitation program has helped thousands of men whose lives were lost to drugs and alcohol. Each day, 300 to 400 men, women and children are served hot meals.

Transients are housed for up to five days, unless they enroll in the one-year rehabilitation program.

Dave Shaw, 48, was in search of spiritual help when he landed at the mission in 1988. Unemployed and hooked on cocaine and alcohol, Shaw said he arrived at the mission weighing only 118 pounds.

“I was skin and bones, and I could hardly talk. I was bleeding internally in my stomach,” he said. “I was 44, and the only thing I looked forward to was dying.”

Instead, he ended up recovering. He stayed on first as a resident and then as in-house handyman and manager. He quit in June to look for a job as a hotel manager.

Shaw was particularly upset because the fire destroyed counseling rooms built by residents and staff members.

“I did most of the work putting it together,” Shaw said, a tear rolling off his left cheek. “And there’s bed No. 18, where I toughed it out for four months. It’s just real emotional.”

The rescue mission was the first homeless shelter for John Marocco, 23, of Florida. He and 11 others were housed upstairs in the mission’s rehabilitation program when the fire broke out in the two-story building.

“When I came, I had nothing. I was having a nervous breakdown, I was stealing from friends,” he said. He saw all his clothes and his driver’s license burn along with the building.

Juan Acosta, 56, said he was lucky to have escaped the fire with the clothes on his back. Blinded 10 years ago when he was struck on the head, Acosta said he was asleep when the fire broke out.

“I heard screaming,” said Acosta, a native of Campeche, Mexico. “Someone grabbed me and took me outside. I just sat in the church until it was over.”

All day Monday, mission workers accepted food and supplies from those who had heard about the fire and dropped by to lend a hand.

Careen Peterson, 23, of Thousand Oaks and two friends bought $20 worth of underwear and toiletries for the homeless men and talked a Ventura K mart store into donating another $50 worth.

Peterson and other volunteers from her Thousand Oaks-based church serve food at the Rescue Mission each Monday and have become acquainted with some of the homeless men.

“We’ve become friends with them,” Peterson said. “I really hurt for them. I really hurt.”