Day Care Gets a Face-Lift : CEOs, Community Leaders Do ‘Dirty’ Work to Renovate Santa Ana Site

While a volunteer force of mostly business leaders and elected officials worked around her, 7-year-old Azure’de Wilkins stared in amazement Saturday amid the commotion at the day-care center she attends.

The dilapidated carpets and floor tiles in the Pride Center’s classrooms were being replaced by new ones. The basketball court soon would have marked lines, two baskets and lawn free of bumps, dips and holes. And the once-barren grounds were now lined with bunches of blue and red pansies, bushes with tiny pink flowers and countless fruit trees.

“It’s going to be a better school for us,” Wilkins said. “They didn’t have flowers there before, and now you could smell them, and they look nice.”

Many of the more than 150 volunteers had children like Wilkins in mind when they agreed to work on Pride Project, a one-day event to renovate the deteriorating day-care center.

“I came just to help the kids out,” said Jon Van Houten of Lake Forest, a construction worker who spent the day installing new doors and locks on the buildings. “Maybe it’ll make life better for them someday.”

Sponsored by the Volunteer Center of Greater Orange County, Pride Project mostly consisted of business and community leaders who are not typically involved with hands-on volunteer work, said Nancy Murray, a project organizer and marketing director at Disneyland.

“I have never seen so many CEOs here in my life,” said Dorothy Davis, founder and director of Pride Center, a nonprofit organization that serves children ages 2 to 14 from low-income families. “I think my dream has come true. If I don’t make another day, I know these people can make a difference.”

Face and clothes covered with mud, the president of Disneyland, Jack Lindquist, planted a tree in the middle of the center grounds. Near him, Lake Forest City Councilwoman Helen Wilson prepared to make new bookshelves and cubbyholes for the rooms.

And at another end of the center, Glenn Gray, a vice president at Wells Fargo Bank, shoveled broken pieces of asphalt from the old basketball court into a wheelbarrow.

“These people are not noted for getting out and working with their hands,” said Lindquist, chairman of the event. “The kids will see and appreciate the work that everyone is doing here this weekend.”

Even some of the kids got involved, like 13-year-old Lori Imery. Imery, who has gone to Pride Center for six years, brought her dad out and the two of them planted lilies and bushes.

Most of the volunteers had little carpentry, painting or technical skills, but they worked with the resources they had.

“I hate to paint, but I wanted to get involved with this project,” said Miles Sexton, a radio station general manager who supervised the painting. “Instead of talking the problem to death, we wanted to do it.”

Some volunteers came earlier in the week or a month ago to prepare for the work that was done Saturday.

Rain earlier in the week forced the group to postpone some cement and roof work. Ken Evans, president of Armor All Products Corp., said: “The weather has slowed us down a bit. But here we are, and it’s going to get done.”

Some passers-by joined the crowd, like Julian Rocha of Santa Ana, who grabbed a brush and immediately began painting one of the trailer walls.

Pride Project was hatched by the Volunteer Center more than a year ago, when leaders from that group offered to fulfill a wish list for Pride Center.

After surveying the center’s poor conditions, however, leaders from the Volunteer Center began a larger renovation projected. They donated supplies or solicited help from others in the community.

“Once you weed out the old, you can put something hopeful in its place,” Davis said. “You need the place to shine, so it’s a place where kids want to go. I’m the dreamer and I believe it can happen.”