Friends Indeed : Needy Families Get More Than a Handout at Centro Shalom

Delmy Hernandez had no one to turn to. Her 9-year-old daughter was in the hospital awaiting a brain operation. Her husband was unemployed. She was pregnant and caring for a toddler. The couple was broke and homeless, and so were her husband’s parents, brother, sister and two nephews.

So they turned to Centro Shalom.

When all nine of them arrived at the social service agency operated out of the Latin American United Methodist Church, director Olivia Herrera thought: “What am I going to do with all these people?”

What she did was give them mattresses to sleep on, something to eat three times a day, advice on getting jobs and plenty of support.

And unlike other agencies that serve the needy, Centro Shalom--which takes its name from the Spanish word for center and the Hebrew word for peace-- did not force them out after a short time.

Most of the Hernandez family stayed at the shelter in central Long Beach a couple of months, long enough to find jobs and a home. Delmy and her husband, William, stayed for 16 months. In that time, their eldest daughter left the hospital and their youngest one was born.

Finally, they were able to leave Centro Shalom in February, and the agency continued to help.

“They gave us everything--beds, furniture, things for the kitchen. They even moved it for us,” said Hernandez, 33, a Salvadoran who now works at the center as a secretary. “The people who have been to Centro Shalom never forget it.”

If there’s such a thing as a caldron of humanity, it’s Centro Shalom. In modest rooms filled with worn furniture and donations that range from clothes to refrigerators, people are fed, housed and helped with their problems, any problems.

Most come to the agency to take home free loaves of bread or to ask questions about immigration problems, spousal abuse or evictions. Too many, however, arrive penniless and hungry and tired and desperate.

The center, which is also sponsored by the South Coast Ecumenical Council, houses about 30 people a day, including three or four families with children.

Centro’s shelter is designed to meet emergency needs, and Herrera prefers that people leave within a few weeks. If they appear to be shiftless, Herrera said, she tells them to move on. “We can’t afford to keep them.”

But if the clients, as Herrera calls them, are trying to find jobs and are working to improve their situations, she allows them to stay indefinitely.

“If they don’t have papers. If they don’t have housing. If they have a disability, how can we put them out?” asks Herrera, director since the center opened in 1977.

With the Hernandez family, for example, Herrera saw that they were hard-working people who needed time to get back on their feet. Today, Delmy Hernandez works at the center, William Hernandez has found a job as a maintenance worker at a hotel and their daughter has recovered from her surgery.

During their time at Centro, they were part of a family that extended far beyond their own. It included Josefina and Jorge Manuel Valdez and their children, who have been at the center a year, waiting to save enough money from their part-time jobs to move to their own home.

There was Bardo Martinez, a 22-year-old orphan from Veracruz, Mexico, who lost three fingers and injured his legs in an accident when he was riding a freight train through Long Beach. He recuperated at the center and now works part time as a gardener.

And there was “the pinata man.” When Miguel Soto arrived at the center last winter, he was destitute and his wife was pregnant with their second child. After staying four months, the Soto family moved into its own home, but Soto kept the tools of his trade at the center.

Today, one room of the center is full of colorful pinatas, giant witches and genies and cartoon characters. Small toys that serve as models for the pinatas crowd shelves, and scissors and crepe paper hang neatly on racks. Pinatas in all stages of development wait to be completed.

“He used to make pinatas and sell them in stores. But during the riots, the stores were burned down and he lost his living and his housing,” Herrera said. “So . . . we let him use a room to create his pinatas. They’re beautiful.”

Sheila Pagnani, the city’s homeless services coordinator, said the center at 1700 Temple Ave.is unique in the Long Beach area, in part because it allows both single men and women, as well as families, to stay for extended periods.

“Olivia is such an extraordinary person. Because of her compassion and nurturing nature, she understands that people, especially families with children, need time, and sometimes the rules don’t apply to them,” Pagnani said.

Herrera never knows who will walk in the door or what problem they may have. A former social worker for Los Angeles County who also spent three years with the United Farm Workers of America, she is one of two paid staff members at the center.

Everyone else is a volunteer, including Herrera’s mother and daughter. Other volunteers are Dirk and Yesenia Sharp. He’s a worker’s compensation attorney in Lakewood and she’s a counselor at Long Beach City College. On most Saturday mornings, the couple is at Centro Shalom. He provides legal advice, and she translates it into Spanish.

“They come in with an entire range of things, including serious questions about family matters, divorces, child custody, immigration problems, car accidents, criminal problems,” Dirk Sharp said. “I help them with what I know and in some cases refer them to other attorneys.”

Now, after 16 years of helping people on a shoestring budget and a staff of volunteers, Centro Shalom expects to get a big boost itself.

The country’s 38,000 United Methodist congregations, spurred to action by the riots that rocked Los Angeles County last year, plan a special appeal to members this month. The goal is to raise $5 million to set up or expand social service programs in urban areas nationwide.

And Centro Shalom in Long Beach, which on a typical year has a budget of about $12,000, stands to gain as much as $400,000 from the fund-raiser, said the Rev. Richard Haddon of the Gardena First United Methodist Church.

“Every four years, bishops from around the country gather together, and this last time came at the same time as the L.A. uprising. Everyone (was) in St. Louis and they (were) all watching the fires on television,” said Haddon, who is helping coordinate the fund-raiser. “So they set aside one morning to talk about L.A. and urban problems in general and decided on a special appeal Oct. 31.”

Since the riots, Centro Shalom’s budget has already more than doubled to about $30,000 with new grants and additional donations. Now, waiting for the additional funds from the church, Herrera said she plans to hire an accountant to deal with the finances.

“We’ve been working on faith forever . . . and making miracles,” Herrera said. “So when we get this money, we want to be very careful and do everything right, so we can stretch it and help as many people as possible.”