Nature’s Healing Power : Camp: Inner-city teen-agers say working with children at mountain retreat has kept them out of trouble and given them a new attitude.

A voice in the wilderness was calling out for help.

“I wanted to get away from everything that was happening,” said 17-year-old Charles Locke, whose Los Angeles neighborhood was ravaged by fire and looting during the riots.

A voice from a different kind of wilderness answered.

It invited Locke and 18 other inner-city teen-agers to spend the summer working in a rugged mountain canyon 50 miles from downtown Los Angeles.

Administrators of the Foundation for the Junior Blind created the jobs at their 40-acre Camp Bloomfield near Malibu. Then they asked organizations in South-Central Los Angeles to help pick teen-agers who would benefit most from having them.

Youths considered to be “at risk” of getting into trouble because of gang affiliations, minor crime problems or difficult family situations were targeted.

The winners were selected from hundreds of nominees suggested by the Brotherhood Crusade, Los Angeles Urban League Youth Services, the county Probation Department, inner-city high schools, First African Methodist Episcopal Church and other groups.

And make no mistake about it, Locke feels like a winner.

“If I wasn’t here, I’d probably be in jail,” the Manual Arts High School junior said as he took a break the other day from working on one of the camp’s water pumps. “I’d probably be doing all kinds of stuff, like stealing from stores. I just thank God for this.

“I was looking for a job. I was looking real hard. But I couldn’t find one.”

The mountain work has ranged from camp maintenance, office duty and kitchen assignments to helping the 700 blind and partially sighted children who are attending this summer’s camp sessions. The workers are receiving two months’ free room and board and up to $900 in pay.

Marva Redd, 16, an 11th-grader at Crenshaw High, has worked as a counselor’s aide. She has helped lead recreational activities, produce a camp newspaper, and lead blind children around the wooded, creek-side campground.

Redd acknowledges that she started the summer with a bad attitude. Withdrawn, angry and alienated are the words that foundation social worker Robert LeCesne uses to describe her back then.

“Before I came up here I didn’t care about a lot of things,” Redd said. “I didn’t know I could do this. But I learned about responsibility, about being a leader. I know now you can’t take things for granted.”

Some teen-age workers helped lead blind campers on a river-rafting and rock climbing trip. Others will assist next week during a six-day exploration of Yosemite National Park, said Marie Johnson, the foundation’s director of social services.

The unusual employment program was organized by foundation President Bob Ralls in late May, several weeks after the riots.

“There was an awful lot of talk out there about jobs. But we believed we should act,” Ralls said. “We were looking for kids on the edge--those who were from an environment that makes them very vulnerable.”

Mark Lucas, Camp Bloomfield’s director for the past eight years, said his 50 college-age camp counselors and other employees have helped teach work skills to the teen-agers since their arrival in June.

Camp maintenance supervisor Basil (B.J.) Falcone delivered an unforgettable lesson on punctuality at 7:20 a.m. one Saturday when worker Howard Wedderburn, 17, and another youth overslept and missed a 7:15 a.m. meeting.

“B.J. took a dead rattlesnake and rattled it over our beds,” said Wedderburn, a junior at Los Angeles High School. “It got us right up. It was a Kodak moment.”

The inner-city youths have also learned plenty from the camp’s blind children, said Cory Mayham, 17, an 11th-grader at Manual Arts. He is working as an assistant counselor and helps run the camp’s 10-horse riding program.

“I’m seriously thinking about working with visually handicapped kids when I get older,” Mayham said.

“It’s a wonderful feeling to me to think I had a part in somebody’s life . . . to look at somebody and say: ‘Hey, I helped that kid.’ ”

At Camp Bloomfield, they know what he means.