Couple Spends Golden Years Helping Drug-Addicted Babies

Some retired people cruise.

Some retired people rock on their front porches.

Most retired people think they’ve earned the right to kick back and have some fun.

For one Pacoima couple, retirement means taking care of drug-addicted babies.

They say it’s their idea of a good (read: rewarding) time.

Albert Booker, 68, was a dietitian at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. His wife, Betty, 66, is a former private care nurse.

They say when they retired, they tried doing nothing, but once the boredom got to them, they went looking for something to do.

They saw an ad for foster parents to care for abused and drug-addicted children who are wards of the court and who have been removed from unsafe households.

Which is how they came to have two babies, a boy 4 months old and a girl who is 7 months, whose names they do not reveal to protect the children’s privacy.

“When we got the little girl, she was six days old and addicted to heroin from her mother. She only weighed four pounds at birth. We had to give her medication constantly to keep the withdrawal seizures down,” Betty Booker said.

The boy they care for was given to them when he was seven days old, weighing six pounds and in worse shape than the girl. “He was addicted to crack cocaine, which is so hard to get off. The poor baby would just shake and cry uncontrollably all the time,” Booker said.

Now the girl baby is “clean” and smiles when she sees Betty and Albert. “She’s growing up in a safe environment and is thriving,” Booker said.

The boy is having a harder time, but the Bookers report seeing progress every day.

“This kind of foster parenting isn’t for everyone,” admits the foster mother, who reared three children of her own. “It takes patience and love, and you have to be willing to give of yourself.”

Booker said she and her husband share the duties, and that both get up for the multiple night feedings.

“When the babies come to us, they are underweight and literally starving. Our little boy would wake up every two hours for months hungry for his formula.”

The couple is paid $520 per month per baby, but the Bookers say that if that looks like easy money, it’s a 24-hour-a-day job.

The Foster Family Agency in Torrance, which placed the children with the Bookers, are looking for more foster parents, particularly in the Valley. But, according to agency director Kathy Sugai, qualified and loving people are not that easy to find.

Movin’ and Shakin’ with the Groovy Garcia Sisters

Elfrida Villalobos, 49, is a Sherman Oaks wife and mother.

She is also the second oldest of the eight Fresno-born-and-bred Garcia sisters.

Once a year, Elfrida, and sisters Elva, Enedina, Emma, Erminia, Esperanza, Elizabeth and Evalina leave their homes in various cities in Southern and Central California and assemble in some other city where they metamorphose into the Groovy Girls.

The sisters are the daughters of a homemaker and a farm laborer, who also reared five sons.

“We were a close family, especially the girls, but once we married and started our own families it was harder to keep in touch,” Villalobos says.

Then her husband, Joe, came up with a solution: The women should set aside a few days each year to go off by themselves for some rest and recreation.

“All of us loved the idea of getting away together without our husbands or kids. We had got 10 together before, of course, but with our families, there we never really got a chance to talk,” Villalobos says.

So, beginning in 1987, the Garcia women--plus several longtime female friends--have taken an annual excursion. In ’87 it was Santa Barbara. They went to Taos the next year. Then it was New Orleans (‘89), Ensenada (‘90), Puerta Vallarta (‘91), San Antonio (‘92) and, this year, Nashville.

They think it was Evalina who came up with the retro-hip Groovy Girls name, and according to Villalobos, it pretty much sums up what they turn into for these wild and crazy stag-ette outings.

“We act ridiculous, the same way a bunch of men would in the situation. We turn into Neanderthals,” she says.

“We tell tasteless jokes, leer at the opposite sex, and drink, get silly and generally carry on outrageously,” she adds.

The only problem with this annual adventure is the pre-trip warfare that centers on where they will go each year.

“My sister Emma always chooses the city because she’s the bossiest; she’s really obnoxious,” says Villalobos.

Emma Diener, 45, who lives in Culver City, says she’s forceful, not obnoxious. “If I didn’t pick the place, we’d just argue and never actually go anywhere,” she says.

Although every sister is not able to make the trip every year, the attendance record is good, Diener says. Including friends, the group usually numbers between 8 and 12.

Asked if the women would ever consider taking husbands and/or brothers, Villalobos says the men couldn’t handle it. “But now that our daughters are becoming adults, we will be taking them,” she says.

Giving the Changing Neighborhood a Chance

Jim Sellerud is a 40-year-old do-gooder who, since graduating from UC Berkeley 18 years ago, has done time in Africa and Mexico.

As a volunteer, he’s helped build an orphanage, install solar equipment and refurbish buildings where there was a need.

After graduating from Berkeley, he worked with his father as a carpenter for a year before going on with his religious studies and becoming a minister.

Now, as the new pastor of the first Presbyterian Church of Granada Hills, he figures he’s got a new kind of construction job: building faith in the neighborhood.

“In the few weeks I’ve been here, all I’ve heard from people is how much they want to move away,” says the newcomer.

Sellerud, who was minister for 15 years in a Presbyterian church in Los Gatos, says it isn’t that he doesn’t understand the situation, it’s that he thinks there could and should be another response.

“Neighborhoods are changing, faces and customs are different. That can frighten people. So can the fear of violence, which is sometimes real and present. My family and I arrived in Los Angeles just before the second Rodney King verdict, and we shared the unrest and fear,” he says.

But Sellerud says his mission in the Valley will be to help people get to know and understand their new neighbors, to welcome new people into the congregation and be enriched by the life experiences the newcomers provide.

“Two cornerstones of Christianity are fairness and openness. We owe it to each other to give one another a chance. Instead of fearing change, we should welcome it and the possibilities for growth and enrichment it offers to us all,” he says.

Gladhanding the Former Help at the New Gladstone’s

Bob Morris thinks he is a good boss, and he didn’t forget his former employees when he opened Gladstone’s Universal Citywalk on Saturday.

Morris is the restaurateur who started and/or operated Gladstone’s 4 Fish, RJ’s, the Jetty, Adam’s and the Malibu Sea Lion.

Several years ago he decided to retire. He sold everything.

He failed at retirement, and is now opening this new Gladstone’s in Universal City.

Morris invited some celebrities and dignitaries to the opening, but the people he really wanted to see were those former employees.

There was no immediate count of how many made the opening--the former chefs, waiters and waitresses and bus people are scattered all over the globe now--but he says he and his staff found addresses for, and invited, 5,000 of them.

Overheard

“If I had it to do over, I would raise cats instead of children. Cats are cleaner, cheaper, don’t require clothing, and they don’t borrow the car.”

--North Hollywood mother of teen-agers to friend