Picture of Recovery : Creditors Help Burned-Out Camera Store Bounce Back From Riots

Photo equipment retailer Samy Kamienowicz contemplates two pictures on his desk. One shows a vivid color view of Samy’s Camera in flames; the other, the smoky ruins of his mid-Wilshire store.

On the second day of the Los Angeles riots, a few men with nice cars and machine guns broke into the Beverly Boulevard store, the largest photo supply house in the West. They took what they wanted and set the business on fire, witnesses said, warning neighbors not to interfere.

“It smoldered for days,” recalled Kamienowicz. The outer walls were left standing, but the interior, all the merchandise and most of the business records were gone. Total loss: between $10 million and $11 million.

And yet, a few days later, Samy was doing business out of a rented party tent in a nearby parking lot. Two weeks after the riots, he was restocking a new store on La Brea Avenue, a few blocks from the old location.

Six months after the violence, the story of Samy’s Camera is both a model and an aberration.

That Samy’s is operating at all is a testament to the determination of Kamienowicz and his employees--and to the patience of many of his vendors, who shipped merchandise and extended new credit even though they were owed hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Most businesses torched during the riots disappeared with the smoke. But with the help of the nonprofit Credit Managers Assn. of California, Samy’s creditors are considering a settlement of the $3.5 million in debt left by the fires. The arrangement has been approved by a committee of large creditors; the rest, numbering about 150, will be voting during the next few weeks on whether to accept the repayment plan.

The alternative was a visit to bankruptcy court that probably would have put Samy’s Camera out of business, Kamienowicz said.

“This was different from a typical commercial bankruptcy,” said Bennett L. Silverman, a bankruptcy lawyer for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher--and a longtime customer of Samy’s who came forward shortly after the fire with an offer to help. “It didn’t have any of the acrimony of a lot of the cases that I’m involved in today.”

Things didn’t look so good on April 30.

Samy and his wife, Hedy, were at Los Angeles International Airport that afternoon, ready to board a flight for a much anticipated trip to London. When Kamienowicz heard that looters were moving up La Brea, he ordered the store closed and the employees sent home.

“You couldn’t imagine. I kept thinking, ‘They’re going to stop this any minute,’ ” said Samy, a genial man with a faint accent that hints of his youth in Belgium. “It was the worst hours probably in our life.”

Kamienowicz spent most of the next few hours on the air phone as his flight traveled east. Finally, at 5 p.m., he learned that the store was burning. Almost as quickly as the Kamienowiczes landed in London, they boarded a return flight.

Samy opened his doors in 1976, after working at his family’s Bel Air Camera shop for 18 years. Competition is heavy for the casual shutterbug, so Samy focused on the professional market. The business grew steadily.

The Beverly Boulevard store, where Samy’s Camera had operated since 1983, carried everything from small photo albums for snapshots to huge lights and backdrops for professional shoots. A popular equipment rental operation also contributed to the store’s roughly $20 million in annual revenue.

All that was reduced to a pile of ashes in hours.

“When we got back, someone picked us up at the airport. And when we got to the store, there was this crowd,” he said. Well-wishers and most of the store’s 50 employees were there: “Everyone was just waiting around, and there was a lot of hugging. It was very emotional.”

What emerged that day was a fierce desire to get going again--quickly.

Up went the party tent, primarily as a base for the rental business, which had merchandise scattered across the city. Although some of the firm’s rental records were destroyed, Samy believes that most of the equipment that was rented out during the riots was returned.

A vacant building was found on La Brea, near Third Street. It was an attractive structure with stained glass windows and ample parking--and bullet holes left from the previous days’ upheaval. The new store is about 5,000 square feet smaller than the old Samy’s (a building that Kamienowicz owns), but foot traffic at the new spot is a little better, he said.

The next challenge was filling the store with stuff to sell. With Silverman’s help, letters went out asking vendors to ship goods even though they were owed money for merchandise that had burned.

“The creditors all appreciated that the loss was no fault of Samy’s. It truly was an event beyond anybody’s control,” Silverman said.

Samy’s large, loyal clientele responded as well.

“Almost everybody made sure that Samy had merchandise to sell, but his customers returned faster than the inventory came in,” Silverman said.

A creditor’s committee met, and hard negotiating followed. But everyone was interested in making a deal, the lawyer said: “The question was, how do you divide the loss in a way that leaves Samy with a viable business and gives the creditors a fair return?”

The claims ranged “all the way from $5 to $560,000,” Kamienowicz said. If the creditors had forced the company into bankruptcy, “we would have lost everything, and they would have lost everything. We’re good customers, I think,” he said, pointing out with pride that the firm has paid all its post-fire debts on time.

Under the proposal approved by the committee, Kamienowicz will pay creditors who are owed more than $10,000 a total of 60% of their claims over three years. Claimants owed between $1,000 and $10,000 will receive a single payment of half the debt. The smallest creditors, with claims of $1,000 or less, will be paid in full.

About two-thirds of the creditors have accepted the proposal, although a few large vendors have yet to vote, Kamienowicz said.

The Credit Managers Assn., which is tallying the votes and will distribute the payments, stands ready to help other riot victims, said Geoffrey L. Berman, manager of the group’s adjustment bureau.

However, the Burbank organization hasn’t been approached by anyone else, he said--partly because of the demographics of those who were looted and burned.

Many were very small businesses that suffered total losses and remain out of business, Berman said. They have no way to pay their creditors.

For now, Kamienowicz is working to rebuild business at his densely packed store. Although he has yet to settle with his insurance company, he is certain the carrier will pay enough to rebuild the old site. Indeed, Kamienowicz said he hopes to have the Beverly Boulevard location open within a year; he is considering architects for the job.

One outcome of all this: Samy’s Camera has extended its hours, opening an hour earlier and closing two hours later during the week.

“Why?” Samy shrugged. “The customers like it.”