Many Riot Victims Feel Abandoned by Aid Process : Relief: Denial rates for federal assistance are at 50%. Applicants are questioning government’s sincerity.

Burned out of homes and businesses, violently stripped of possessions gained through years of sacrifice, thousands of victims of the Los Angeles riots are now finding that help may not be on the way after all.

Nearly four months after the city erupted in anger, there is a dawning realization that comforting promises of relief made in the riots’ emotional aftermath came with an asterisk--the fine print laying out criteria for federal assistance that many will never meet.

Denial rates for nearly all federal grant and loan programs are running at 50% or higher, leaving many victims and their advocates with the sense that the aid process is not working. They say that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, more accustomed to dealing with natural disasters, has not adapted its programs to meet the needs of riot victims.

Agency officials counter that they have attempted to streamline procedures, doing the best they can to aid victims as quickly and efficiently as possible. For example, rental assistance guidelines that required an eviction notice from a landlord were eased so that to obtain aid victims only had to show proof of an intent to evict.

“We’re humans and we can make mistakes,” said Josie Arcurio, who is in charge of FEMA’s individual assistance program. “But this is a unique type of disaster for us, and we’re always looking at ways to do better.”

Still, many victims, with mounting frustration, are raising troubling questions about the government’s sincerity. Aid applicants describe being viewed with suspicion, as if they were out to misuse the system.

“It’s like they want you to run an obstacle course, but they set up the system to fail,” said David Eason, 37, a Westside resident who was two days away from beginning a job as a manager at an auto parts store when it burned during the riots.

His application for rental assistance was denied. Eason appealed that decision and was turned down again. But he was more persistent than many riot victims, who either do not realize that they have the right to appeal or are too fed up or intimidated to bother.

Eason contacted Assemblyman Tom Hayden, his congressman’s office and took his case to City Hall. A few days later, he said, a FEMA check arrived in the mail.

“Why? I think because I made some noise,” Eason said.

But others have been less successful.

“If I could get to (President) Bush, I would tell him that there are people in Los Angeles County who are literally in the same situation as people in Bosnia or the former Soviet Union, but we are getting no help,” said Marilynn Boyko.

Boyko has lived and worked in Los Angeles’ inner city all of her life--as a schoolteacher on the Eastside, a volunteer counselor for prison inmates, a mentor for young girls in South-Central.

About a year ago, she decided she could use her contacts and fund-raising knowledge to open a consulting business that would offer marketing, promotion and proposal-writing services to small charities, most of them in South-Central Los Angeles.

Operating from her Echo Park apartment, Boyko estimates that her fledgling business was netting about $4,000 a month--until the riots.

Three agencies in the riot areas that were about to sign contracts pulled back, deciding that they were in no position to hire a consultant. “These were going to put meat on the table,” Boyko said. “Instead, I have had no income since May 3.”

Still, Boyko was optimistic. She applied for disaster unemployment insurance. But after waiting weeks for a response, Boyko was told she did not qualify because, technically, she had not lost her business.

“I was told that I could get clients anywhere,” she said. “But I just can’t pick up and find other agencies so easily.”

Boyko also was denied rental assistance by FEMA, which said she could not establish her income. She is appealing that decision, upset that it seems as if she is being punished for choosing to do most of her business in poor communities.

“There have been weeks when I have been so depressed that I have gone to bed crying and woke up crying,” said Boyko, who has borrowed from friends and sold personal possessions to hang onto her car. Meanwhile, her landlord, who had been patient until now, has begun calling and asking for rent.

“You feel so alone you don’t know what to do,” she said.

According to FEMA, more than 26,000 people have applied for assistance; the agency has disbursed more than $12 million to victims.

Still, legal advocates say that Los Angeles riot victims are doubly handicapped. FEMA, they charge, has a generally poor record of getting aid to disaster victims who need it. And the agency, they say, is compounding the failure by applying disaster guidelines to those who suffered losses in the riots.

“They talk a good game and have good public relations, but when the dust clears, you find the response had not been very good,” said Paul Lee, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

“When you see a 50% or 60% rate of ineligibility, I find it hard to believe that many people would go to the trouble of filling out these applications if their claims were that far off the mark.”

Lee has filed a request for complete denial and appeal rates. “We’re speaking with clients and with their advocates . . . and then will decide if there may be something to litigate,” Lee said.

FEMA officials could provide no information on how many denials have led to appeals or been overturned. And they argue that only looking at denial rates can be misleading because all claims are judged on a case-by-case basis.

“People will think they have provided adequate information, but sometimes it is not enough,” Arcurio said. “There is a certain frustration in that.”

For many victims, there is more than frustration. They tell their stories in voices that rise in a crescendo of anguish, hurt and disbelief. They lived through the worst civil disturbance in a century; their lives are in ruin, they say. And yet their government seems unwilling or unable to help.

They are people such as Elliot Smith.

On April 29, as the rage prompted by the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case snaked south and began exploding into fires and angry mob scenes in Long Beach, Smith raced from his home in the middle of the night to protect his business.

For three days, he and friends kept vigil on the front steps of his Pacific Avenue office. Twice they drove away gangs of teen-agers who threatened Smith’s hair-care supply firm, which he and a partner had nurtured for more than a year.

As it turned out, their fate would be decided farther north, in the heart of the riot area, where 11 of the 17 beauty supply stores that stocked Smith’s herbal products on a consignment basis were destroyed or looted, effectively wiping out his business.

Faced with putting the small amount of money he could scrape together toward rent on either his home or his office, Smith chose to hang onto the business and lost his apartment. He could not keep up payments on his car, so it was repossessed; he figures he has walked about 100 miles since then.

And finally, what for Smith was the biggest surprise: His application for a $5,600 Small Business Administration disaster loan was denied because neither he nor his business partner had the collateral to cover it.

Smith now lives day to day, worrying that his business landlord--who has begun eviction proceedings--will put a lock on his door. Occasionally, he has trouble hearing, and he has begun suffering double vision--both outgrowths of stress, he was told by his doctor. Before, he netted about $1,300 a week selling his beauty products. Now, he has taken a job at a car dealership but has earned only about $800 this month.

“If I had the money to buy the product, then I could work with other stores, and maybe recover a little bit,” said Smith.

Smith has not appealed the SBA’s decision but is thinking of it. “When I went in to apply, they knew my situation,” he said. “But nobody told me that I would need collateral for a loan over $5,000.”

Others besides Smith say they were misinformed in their dealings with clerks at FEMA-run disaster application centers, or recount experiences when documents needed for assistance turned up lost, forcing them to start the process over again.

Arcurio defended FEMA workers as “dedicated, qualified and well-trained.”

The federal agency has been criticized in its handling of past disasters, most recently back-to-back catastrophes in 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake in Northern California and Hurricane Hugo, which smashed into the East Coast.

The General Accounting Office scolded the agency for excessive delays in helping low-income victims of the earthquake.

Congressional auditors noted that of 4,000 low-income housing units destroyed or damaged during the quake, only 114 had been approved for replacement funding more than a year later. The GAO called for better training of personnel, faster assistance for individuals and overall improvement of FEMA operations.

FEMA officials say they have improved operations, insisting that the handling of the Los Angeles riots has been among their most accomplished feats.

But legal aid groups in Los Angeles contend that FEMA is applying an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of disaster aid requirements.

The two biggest hurdles: the inability of riot victims to produce satisfactory documentation of losses, and the determination--made on a case-by-case basis--that losses are not riot-related.

In many cases, victims who were suffering financially before the riots have been unable to persuade federal authorities that their post-riot economic hardships are linked to the civil disturbances.

The consequences have been almost as devastating as the riots.

Legal rights groups aiding in the relief effort report that possibly hundreds of victims who suffered legitimate losses are on the verge of being evicted from homes or businesses--many because they have been denied federal assistance.

And the experience of seeking--and being denied--assistance is exacting a toll in increased physical disorders and heightened emotional turmoil.

“The whole process is a rather lengthy and stressful one,” said Norma Cook, who is in charge of FEMA-funded counseling programs for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.

“We’ve talked to people who . . . were expecting that money would just be made available to them, and then they realize they will have to take out second mortgages on their homes or undertake some other debt,” Cook said. “If they go through the process and get nothing, there is a feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness.”

The pain suffered by Jose Gutierrez during the riots is real--and probably will last a lifetime, even if he receives a government grant.

Gutierrez, a husband and father of three, was shot five times as he and another man attempted to douse an arson blaze that threatened businesses and homes in his Pico-Union neighborhood just west of downtown.

There are still four bullets lodged in Gutierrez’s head and back. He learned through a friend that his companion--whom he did not know--died in the hospital from his wounds.

Gutierrez is not in the country legally. But federal and state disaster relief is available to those who suffered physical and economic losses during the riots, regardless of their legal status.

Yet Gutierrez, unable to work much since the riots because of his medical problems, has received no assistance--nor a reply--in response to his application for rental aid and a family grant to cover medical expenses.

“ Nada, “ he says softly in Spanish.

Gutierrez came to Los Angeles three years ago from Oaxaca, Mexico, where he could no longer support his growing family on the pay from his job with a rubber company, collecting old tires for re-treading.

After stints of homelessness, sleeping in the parks, working as a dishwasher in a restaurant and as a day laborer, Gutierrez found steady employment with a security company as a guard at apartment buildings and businesses.

On the second day of the riots, Gutierrez was at home when the company dispatched him to an apartment building where residents were fearful of being torched; the regular guard refused to go out, colleagues told Gutierrez.

The building, it turned out, was just across the street from his home.

Gutierrez heard cries and screams from the street and saw flames rising from a business on the corner. He grabbed two fire extinguishers from his building and ran out.

“In that moment, I didn’t think--I didn’t realize--the danger I was putting myself into,” he said.

He handed another man one of the fire extinguishers. But at that second, shots rang out, hitting Gutierrez first and then the other man.

The two remained conscious, writhing in pain for 30 minutes until police and paramedics arrived. “I was thinking about my children,” Gutierrez said. “I never imagined I would have this kind of experience in this country. I was thinking, if I survive, I’m leaving.”

Gutierrez was taken to County-USC Medical Center, where he was X-rayed, fed intravenously, given aspirin to relieve the pain and little other care, he says. No one told him why the bullets were not removed. The one still lodged at the base of his skull gives him the most problems, causing headaches and swelling. Many nights he cannot sleep.

A hospital spokesman declined comment.

A representative of the county’s Victim-Witness Assistance Program contacted him. But other than money he received from the Mexican Consulate and the Hispanic Women’s Council, Gutierrez has yet to receive any assistance.

Right now, Gutierrez just wants enough to take care of his family.

“My goal is to try to save a little bit of money,” he said. “Then we will go back to Mexico and open a business and never look back.”