Phone Bank Volunteers Honored for Riot Work : Involvement: 25 who staffed assistance lines heard heart-rending stories of personal loss. They offered advice and comfort. ‘A lot of people needed to talk,’ one says.

Telephone operator Willie Bolton could not believe what he was hearing.

He was talking to a woman on her wedding day last May, and she was frantic. Her gown and her groom’s tuxedo had turned to ashes when the store where they rented them burned during the Los Angeles riots. When the church where they were to be married also burned, the bride called a riot hot line for help.

“I would’ve been devastated,” Bolton said. “But after a while she seemed to take it in stride.”

Bolton was one of 25 Ticketmaster telephone sales operators who volunteered to staff a phone bank after last spring’s riots. They helped businesses and people hurt by the unrest fill out loan forms and find disaster assistance centers.

On Monday, Mayor Tom Bradley honored the operators from the ticket vending agency for their volunteer work, awarding each a certificate of appreciation.

More than 3,000 riot victims--from a boy who had lost his bike to an electronics store owner who lost $16 million--called the city hot line for help after the rioting. The hot line forwarded their requests to the volunteers who contacted the callers for information that they sent to the Small Business Administration.

Although the phone banks were set up for business owners, some callers reported losing their small savings or even loved ones during the unrest.

“We ended up doing a lot of listening and not so much referring,” said Willis Oliver, a volunteer who lives in the Mid-Wilshire district. “A lot of people needed to talk.”

Volunteer Vida Ross said the plight of one caller struck her deeply. A woman with a newborn baby had spent her savings of $300 on furniture for her empty home in South-Central Los Angeles, but the furniture never made it to her house. The furniture was burned in the showroom, and she had no hope of reimbursement.

“It may not have been a big thing,” Ross said. “It was $300. But to me, it was the case that would have gotten lost in the paperwork.”

Some volunteers felt frustration and helplessness in the days after the unrest.

“I called asking a victim if he wanted an SBA loan,” Tinamarie Suarez said. “He told me he was just pulled out of a car and beaten. . . . He ran away and fell asleep in an abandoned house. He didn’t know what to do or where to go.

“I told him: ‘I’ll try to do something for you,’ ” Suarez said, but she knew she could only talk to the man and try to comfort him.

Volunteers called another man in South-Central Los Angeles who did not want a loan--he only wanted to know why his son died in an arson fire. “There was nothing we could do,” Suarez said.

Other volunteers called the experiences “haunting” and said they sometimes replayed calls in their heads when they went home.

“You could just hear the helplessness in the voices,” Oliver said. “You listen to somebody tell you about their problems and you’re so horrified. It’s hard to put down the phone and forget about it.”

The phone calls tailed off in June and volunteers are now following up on only a handful of cases. But the feelings that grew out of the work still remain strong, volunteers said.

“It just made me want to do more,” Suarez said. Others added that several operators volunteered for the recent Los Angeles AIDS Walk.

Although the calls ended months ago, some volunteers still muse about the people they met by phone and talked to for hours on end.

“Sometimes,” Ross said, “I’d just like to know how all my calls turned out.”