COSTA MESA : Hoag Cottage a Haven for Children of Poor

The little brown cottage on Orange Avenue has been a saving factor for hundreds of moms and dads.

It has helped some families afford an apartment and stop living in their cars. It has enabled single parents to give their children Christmas toys, even medical insurance. Its very existence has given some parents the opportunity to work without worrying about their children’s safety.

Once the home of Orange County’s prominent Hoag family, the Assistance League’s Grace Hoag Cottage is now a daytime home for hundreds of children, a safe haven where they can play with “Lovely” the pot-bellied pig and “PJ” the goat.

The nonprofit group has run the day-care center for more than two decades to help working parents, many of them poor, care for their children.

“I have parents who come to me and they break down in tears when I tell them they can bring their child here,” said Rita Jamieson, director of the day-care center. “They say now they will be able to afford medical care for their children. It is so sad.”

Stacy Polos sometimes juggles three jobs to provide for her 4-year-old daughter, Lauren.

The 22-year-old single mother also is a student at Orange Coast College where she attends classes to earn a sociology degree. She discovered the Hoag Cottage more than a year ago. A regular sitter for Lauren would have drained so much from her paycheck, it wouldn’t have been worth working, Polos said.

“I owe them a lot,” Polos said as she watched her daughter swing upside down from a nearby tree. “They have been just wonderful.”

Like 90% of the parents who bring their children to the center, Polos pays for the care on a “sliding scale” according to her income. Monthly child care costs can range from $125 to $475, well below most private centers. A handful of parents with very low incomes are eligible for scholarships that cover the entire day-care bill, center officials said.

All the money needed to operate the center--from the scholarships to the salaries of the teachers--comes from the Assistance League of Newport-Mesa. The organization takes on massive fund-raising campaigns to raise the more than $1 million a year needed to keep the cottage and the league’s other programs afloat. As part of that effort, hundreds of volunteers run an upscale consignment shop and a thrift store in Costa Mesa.

Like all the league’s projects, the day-care center is very popular. The waiting list is always full--recently with 600 children. Many will never make it through the door, and their parents will have to find affordable care elsewhere.

Sadly, say center officials, the Hoag Cottage is one of only a handful of programs in Orange County that assists poor, working parents.

“It is a perpetual boiling pot,” said Jamieson of the never-ending need for affordable care in the county. To help ease the crunch, the league now is trying to raise money to add three more classrooms to expand enrollment from 96 to about 150.

Lauren Polos was one of the lucky ones. She got in.

Since enrolling her daughter, Stacy Polos has noticed some changes in her. She plays well with the other children and is able to work out problems with solutions not so much anger. Lauren is also learning to share.

Playing one afternoon in the back yard of the cottage, filled with a swing-set, sandboxes and slides, the 4-year-old clad in her “kitty” sweater was a blur, running from one activity to another. First Lauren was at the mock bank, then off to the back yard airport. Her mother just looked on with a laugh.

“It has been great for her,” Stacy Polos said, smiling. “She loves it here.”