When the Need Is Desperate : Red tape: When assistance checks don’t show up, the Rev. George Joe knows exactly who to call and how to get results. Without him, many would just give up.

After the county canceled her family’s financial aid, Eleanor Stroud was distraught.

Unemployed and with no food in her refrigerator, she needed the twice-monthly check of $394 to feed her three children. It would take a month to restore benefits, and she couldn’t afford a lawyer to speed the process.

What to do? Stroud visited the Rev. George Joe.

She told him that the county canceled the aid without notice after she turned in a form late.

Joe agreed to help. He phoned an official in a county welfare office. “This is Rev. Joe. How are you doin’?” he cooed in a drawl reminiscent of his native Texas.

The official said that Stroud might have to file a lengthy appeal.

“If they did not issue her a cancellation notice, she automatically is due her check,” Joe explained. “If we go to appeal, we will automatically win because this was the county’s error.”

The official said Stroud could pick up her check the next morning.

Another case solved by Joe, 63, who has spent more than 20 years as an unofficial ombudsman helping thousands of residents untangle problems with their Social Security, disability and other government assistance. The former welfare clerk, who left his job because of health problems, knows the system intimately--and has won the respect of many of the people in it.

“He’s very knowledgeable about welfare programs and about the communities he serves,” says Eddy Tanaka, director of the county Department of Public Social Services, where Joe has served on the advisory committee since 1979.

“He helps individuals who have difficulty finding their way through the system,” says Tanaka. “He has ideas on how to correct those problems. He serves as sort of the committee’s eyes and ears for me.”

By Joe’s own count, he succeeds 99% of the time. And “the 1% who fail don’t do what I tell them.”

He regularly checks in with officials in all 33 county welfare district offices. “I monitor all the offices to see if they are going by the rules,” he says. “If there’s something they are not doing right, I let them know. If they don’t clean it up, I go up the chain of command.”

People who are illiterate, mentally ill or who can’t decipher the language of bureaucratic forms need help the most, he says.

“If people don’t have someone to be a liaison, they will have problems. . . . A lot of people are afraid to even confront the different agencies because they are used to being treated so rough.”

Marcine Shaw, senior deputy for County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, says Joe is among the few people whom residents can go to when they have problems with the system.

“If he phones me, I take his call and move on it as soon as possible,” Shaw says. “It’s always (about) somebody who’s desperate.”

Because of poor health, the gentle, heavy-set Joe works from the bedroom of his tiny, two-room cottage near USC.

At least 15 people, referred by family, friends or doctors, open the unlatched screen door to see him each day. His wife, Evelyn, greets guests and helps make them comfortable.

Joe tries to help them all, even though he suffers from arthritis, diabetes, emphysema, high blood pressure and a degenerating hip that allows him to walk only a few steps.

His bedroom is always crowded. Filing cabinets and an oxygen tank for his emphysema leave little space to move around. Papers cover the bed. A large TV with the sound turned down is always on. The phone rings constantly.

A volunteer assistant sits nearby, answering calls and taking messages. “I was doing it myself, but the arthritis started getting into my hands,” Joe says. “He does all the writing now.”

Another assistant helps Joe into his wheelchair and drives him to advisory committee meetings or to hearings for people with disability claims.

Joe works five days a week and finishes paperwork on Saturdays. The heavy demand for his services increases during crises such as the Los Angeles riots. People sought emergency food stamps or welfare when their workplaces burned down.

The calls never seem to stop. “I’ve been in the hospital three times with heart attacks,” he says. “People called the hospital and said they were my family from out of town. When I picked up the phone they said, ‘I didn’t get my check.’ ”

Joe runs his program while living on $645 in monthly disability. Whenever he wins retroactive, long-term benefits for someone, he requests a $750 donation to his nonprofit South Central Human Services Coalition. But few contribute, he says.

Undaunted, Joe would like to do more. Twice he sought a $10,000 line of credit to expand but was rejected when he couldn’t show proper income from the new coalition.

Joe says he has wanted to help people since he was came to Los Angeles at age 6.

“I used to be very athletic,” he says. “When we played games and I was captain, I’d always pick boys the other boys wouldn’t pick--the kids who were awkward or couldn’t throw. And a lot of them developed into good players by me doing that.”

After graduating from Jefferson High in 1946, he served three years in the Air Force and attended junior college. In the mid-1950s, he joined the Department of Public Social Services as a clerk. He became grievance chairman of the Los Angeles County Employees Assn.

After leaving the department in 1969, he began his ombudsman’s work. He also studied for 10 years before he became an ordained minister in the Church of God in Christ, for which he serves as an assistant pastor.

“That’s why I can’t stop,” Joe says. “I promised God I’d help everyone He sent to me.”

Sherron Johns is among those grateful for Joe’s promise. “I would have been going around in circles and being nervous,” says Johns, 42, who exhausted her state disability payments after injuring her leg and back. She couldn’t qualify for unemployment because she was unable to work and didn’t know what to do. Joe helped her find an answer, by working through general relief programs.

“There’s a lot of paperwork and some of it I just don’t understand,” Johns says. “(Without George Joe,) I probably would have given up because they talk to you so bad when you really need help and make you feel like you’re nobody.”