Child Advocacy Work Takes Heart

For most of his life Aaron Ruben made people laugh. Now he makes them cry with stories of the hurt children he is trying to help.

Whether the tears he evokes are ones of happiness or pain, once people are touched by Ruben they must, in his words, either write a check or get involved--there is no in-between.

Ruben is a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate. He helps abused and neglected children make their way through the often-terrifying and confusing Dependency Court system. Special advocates are trained and appointed to the most serious cases in which a child has been removed from home. Often, the volunteer is the only reliable adult friend the child has and his only voice. Ruben has been an advocate more than five years.

“CASA is about compassion, lending a hand, doing really important work,” Ruben said in an interview at his Beverly Hills home. “There are 42,000 children in the Dependency Court system in Los Angeles County. They need support and the judges need information so that the best interests of the child can be served. These are not criminals, these are children who come from abusive and neglected environments.”

Until recently, Dependency Court cases were heard in the Criminal Courts building and children were brought in through the same underground garage where shackled criminals entered. Ruben remembers a child asking him whether he was going to jail, too.

Now, the Dependency Court has a separate building in Monterey Park specially designed for children. Even the judge sits closer to eye level.

Ruben’s latest case is a 2-year-old child taken from her mother because of the mother’s drug addiction. The child has already been in eight different placements. “She comes to me, hugs me, is affectionate. But if we don’t get her into a loving home she is not going to make it. I deal with everyone--grand-

parents, parents, drug counselors. I used to weep all the way home, but I don’t anymore. I compare it to being a doctor. After the first couple of cases you develop a certain demeanor.”

Ruben’s first case was a 17-year-old named Monica, whose parents died in a homicide-suicide. The first time he saw Monica, he said, she looked so forlorn he wanted to hug her--which in Monica’s case he acknowledges would have been a mistake. Instead, he told her what his job was. They went to a mall for lunch. They developed a relationship. When Ruben gets to the part where she graduated from high school, he has to regain his composure, because describing how happy Monica looked in her cap and gown still fills his eyes with tears.

Usually, when the child reaches 18, CASA volunteers are no longer involved. But in Monica’s case, he said, “I couldn’t walk away. She was the only one of her six siblings that was going to make it. So when she said she wanted to go to college, I helped her. Today, five years later, she is on scholarship at San Francisco State. She spends Christmas with my wife and me and she refers to me as dad,” he said.

This is not standard CASA, but it is classic Aaron Ruben, the son of Polish immigrants. “My father wanted me to be a Mensch-- a successful Mensch --and my mother wanted me to be a teacher,” he said. Ruben went into show business, first as an actor and then as a comedy writer for many of the greats: Fred Allen, George Burns, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Danny Thomas. He made the transition from radio to television; he produced the “Andy Griffith Show,” directed “Sergeant Bilko” and wrote for “Gomer Pyle” and “Sanford and Son.”

*

When Ruben retired from show business 15 years ago, he and his wife, Maureen Arthur Ruben, decided to get involved. “I called Childrens Hospital and asked if we could bring some toys over and they told me to leave them in the lobby. I said we wanted to see the children, and that began a weekly visit to the TB ward where we did skits and entertained,” he said.

Maureen Arthur Ruben went on to become the president of the children’s charity of the Variety Club of Southern California, and Aaron Ruben began working with suicidal adolescents at the county’s MacLaren Children’s Center in El Monte. “The first time I heard a child say ‘I wish I was dead,’ it was devastating, but I was also hooked for the rest of my life to helping children. Just making the difference with one child, giving them the strength to go on, is worth everything,” he said.

CASA work can be pretty heart-wrenching; it’s not for everyone, Ruben said. But older people are a vital source of volunteers for the program. Rita Cregg, director of the Child Advocate’s Office, which oversees CASA, said about one-third of the program’s volunteers are senior citizens.

“People with life experiences are better able to give these children the benefit of patience, wisdom they’ve gained, time, and most important, caring for the sake of caring what happens to children,” Cregg said. “We have seen people who are able to take on battles and renew themselves in the process.”

As for Aaron Ruben, he wants his epitaph to read: “He cared about kids.” He also wants every child who needs an advocate to get one. “If our hearts can go out to the spotted owl,” he said, “it can also go to innocent children.”

* HOW TO HELP For information on becoming a Court Appointed Special Advocate, call the Child Advocate’s Office at (213) 526-6666. The advocate’s office is a quasi-public agency jointly funded by the Los Angeles County Superior Court and private sources.