Just Another Day in Paradise : Desperate Clients Grumble. Some Freak Out. Savvy Hustlers Play the Angles. The Harried Staff Hides Behind Glass, Fighting Burnout. And a Few Gentle Souls Try to Keep the Lid on an L.A. Welfare Office.

It is 4 a.m. Cecilia, 34, huddles outside the West Los Angeles welfare office. Divorced. Alone. Broke, she says, but not broken. “Welfare’s so messed up in there . . . takes so long. Gotta stay here all night to be first in line. Only way I’ll get a hotel voucher come dark. Can’t spend another night sleepin’ outside. Gettin’ cold.”

By 6 a.m., the line behind Cecilia meanders to the corner. Most, judging by their lean, weathered look and their grimy, patchwork trappings, are in urgent need. Many are blow-ins, tumbleweeds, carrying their possessions in trash sacks, backpacks and bindles. And some are professional welfare hustlers--mooches who boast of manipulating California’s largess. In all, they are a mix of race, sex and age.

At precisely 6:45 a.m. each weekday, David Gatlin of the Los Angeles County Safety Police unlocks the door and steps outside into the pre-dawn gloom. He is in his early 50s and almost six feet tall. He is muscled, barrel-chested and thick around the waist. His hair is a grizzled stubble. His face is friendly and expressive. His eyes are green and tired. He wears a bulletproof vest and carries a billy club, pepper gas, handcuffs, walkie-talkie, a 9mm semiautomatic.

Two men dozing on foam-rubber bedrolls scramble to their feet. The scruffy crowd stirs with anticipation. A welfare veteran cracks: “Another shitty day in paradise, huh, Mr. Gatlin?” Gatlin’s face crinkles in a grin, then sags wearily. His clear, resonant voice slices through the morning roar of trucks, buses and cars: “For those of you who have not been here for a while, the same things that stressed you out and made you angry before are still waiting for you inside. Nothing has changed.”

As it happens, I’m here to test Gatlin’s prophecy. I’m a reporter undercover. I get in line to apply for welfare.

“INCREDIBLE . . . FRIGHTENING . . . LIKE BEING IN A THIRD World country,” is how Mike Back, head of the fraud unit of the state Department of Social Services, describes his visits to the 32 welfare offices in Los Angeles County.

Capt. Joseph Hibbs of the Safety Police says a county welfare office “can be a very dangerous place.” A supervisor in West Los Angeles describes her welfare waiting room as “scary . . . a social club” for the dregs of a once laid-back Los Angeles turned low-down and vicious.

Welfare offices are so understaffed, the workers so burnt out, that some help applicants cheat just to fill unofficial quotas, avoid confrontation, get them out of their hair. It is a system so flawed that the greedy, the lazy, rip and run with ease. The attitude on both sides of the reinforced windows that separate staff from applicant is: Us Against Them. The system becomes so cynical that the desperate--the great majority of applicants, by most estimates--are left under a pall of suspicion, clawing even harder to get the help to which they’re entitled.

Los Angeles County welfare figures are chilling. The caseload has doubled since 1988 to just over 1.8 million recipients as of October. Welfare payments jumped from $2.1 billion in fiscal year 1992 to $2.6 billion in fiscal ’93.

There are bright spots, too. There is Officer Gatlin, the calming eye in a hurricane of nastiness. And there are the tough-minded supervisors who hold their staffs together by beseeching them in memos and face to face: “Be professional. Act courteously. Stay cool.” They remind staff daily to sift out the crooks, but to treat the rest as victims of a California Dream in shambles.

The largest welfare program by far is called Aid to Families with Dependent Children, created for children with one or both parents unable, unavailable or unwilling to provide care. The West Los Angeles office on Pico Boulevard, where I get in line, deals only with the other key programs: food stamps, general relief and Medi-Cal. Applications for those services involve 79 pages of questions, instructions and rules. Truthfulness can become meaningless, though, when survival is at stake--when faced with suspiciously worded “Yes” or “No” questions such as: “I gave away money or sold or gave away property, land or buildings during the past two years.” Rumor has it that sometimes people do check “Yes.” Admissions demand more answers to more detailed questions.

I seek advice from a couple in line--let’s call them John and Angela. They claim to be husband and wife. They admit to being professional welfare hustlers. Their specialty is interstate welfare fraud--collecting relief checks and trafficking in food stamps--from two or more states at the same time. California, they say, is the softest touch of all.

John is middle-aged, with clear blue eyes that don’t waver or dart. No shame to his game. Angela is in her 20s, with a pretty face quick to harden. She spreads cheese on a soda cracker. John sips coffee from a stainless steel Thermos. They are well prepared. They, too, expect to be here all day.

I tell them I’m new at this, and I don’t want to make a mistake. I ask about the questionnaire for General Relief. They advise: Just say you’re homeless, friendless, without family, flat busted and you’re entitled to $112 a month in food stamps, $212 a month in General Relief (cash), a hotel voucher for two weeks, $14.20 in bus tokens and $55.50 twice a year for clothing. You can collect for the rest of your life as long as you requalify once a year. And tell them that if you don’t get it, you’re going to Legal Aid and raise a stink.

I complete my application by 7:30 a.m. An hour later, I am told over the loudspeaker to go to Interview Booth No. 8. John flashes a thumbs-up. The interview is conducted in an open cubicle. I plop onto a stubby steel stool with a pie-pan-sized seat. The interviewer speaks through a metal grill in the center of a thick glass window reinforced with wire mesh. Two other applicants are by my side, waiting for their turn, sitting on the cubicle’s tiny wooden bench. Our knees scrape. We shift positions. They listen intently. My sob story is cheap entertainment.

“So, you’re an unemployed writer?” the interviewer asks. He smirks.

I smile weakly. “Who isn’t in L.A.?”

My fellow applicants nudge each other and grin. Privacy and poverty are an unaffordable mix here.

The interviewer stares stonily. He riffles through my application. “Homeless, I see. Sleeping in your van. Guess you need a hotel voucher.”

I nod. His eyes narrow.

“So,” he says crisply, coldly. “This van you’re living in is your van. You’re the registered owner? Am I correct?”

“I guess so,” I mumble. I glance at my applicant pals. They stare at the floor, avoiding eye contact--embarrassed by my stupidity. Clearly, I have goofed. I have told the truth.

The interviewer scrawls something across the top of my file and slaps it shut. “Sorry, you’re disqualified for General Relief. Your car is worth more than $1,500. All you can get is food stamps.”

“But the bank owns it,” I whine.

My interviewer leans forward. His voice is sympathetic. “Come back on Monday. Reapply for General Relief. Your name and your van will be out of the computer.” We stare into each other’s eyes. I catch his drift. I return to the lobby to wait to be interviewed by a food stamp screener. John and Angela scurry over. I tell them what happened. They cock their heads in disbelief, dismay and disgust.

John’s voice is sad: “You should have never told them about the van.” He suggests a new tack, a complex strategy for duping the system. He speaks slowly, patiently, as if talking to a child: “Buy a book of blank rent receipts at the drugstore . . . .”

I take out pen and paper. “Better take notes,” I mumble.

John and Angela glance at each other in wonderment. “Maybe you’d better just say you’re sleeping on the beach,” John advises.

IT IS NOON. I’VE DECIDED NOT TO PURSUE THE GENERAL RELIEF APPLIcation--not to join the more than 104,000 people in Los Angeles now collecting it. But I am going to try to get food stamps. The welfare office is mobbed. It is the size of a neighborhood movie lobby. The walls are painted two shades of prison gray. Screwed, glued and tacked to them are more than 100 signs, placards and posters in English and Spanish. Fifteen read: “No Smoking. No Fumar.” A half-dozen proclaim: “Saving Seats Is Prohibited,” “Profanity Is Prohibited.” Other signs range from “Courtesy Is Contagious” to “We No Longer Store Weapons.”

Locked together in rows are 167 squat, narrow plastic chairs colored orange, yellow, green, navy blue, black and brown. All are occupied. Seventeen people have fallen asleep. Those who snore are jabbed periodically. Those with friends are nudged awake. Few read. Few talk. Most stare at the ceiling, walls or floor, straining to hear their name over the loudspeaker and above the din of traffic, piped-in music and chatter. Miss your name, miss your turn. Come back tomorrow.

A woman doubles over and vomits in front of a large portable fan. There is a mad scramble to flee the stench. Another woman carrying coffee is jostled. Her coffee spills. An old man skids on the wet floor and sprawls on hands and knees. People step over and around him cursing and grousing. The vomit is mopped up. The coffee is not. The crowd inside spills outside onto Pico.

Gerarrdo, 33, sits on the sidewalk and rests his head against the building. Two daughters, 14 and 12, hold his crutches. “I fell from a palm tree I was trimming,” he says. “Broke both my feet. One year now. My feet don’t get better. My disability ran out. My wife is in there trying to get food stamps, anything. They keep telling us we gotta keep coming back.” He smiles at his daughters. “We gonna make it, somehow.”

Nearby, Laurie, 17, shares a cola with her 18-month-old daughter, Dawn. “We come in from Virginia,” Laurie explains. “Car broke down in El Paso. All our stuff got stole. I had bus fare.” Laurie holds her daughter close. “Her dad’s in jail in Virginia. Ain’t getting out anytime soon. My sister’s in there trying to get food stamps.”

An hour passes. My name is called. The next interviewer is in her late 20s. She looks harried. She frowns at my application. “If you’re unemployed and broke all these months, how have you been getting by?”

I scratch for an answer. “Uh, I’ve been borrowing money from family and friends. Yeah. That’s what I’m doing.”

Her eyebrows arch with alarm. Her voice is stern. “It had better not be more than 10 or 15 dollars.”

“Oh, no!” I assure her. “Only 10 or 15 dollars.”

She shoves my application through the slot. “Then write down ‘only 10 or 15 dollars.’ Initial it and sign the bottom.”

Next question: “Do you have a Social Security card?”

I nod happily and recite my Social Security number.

She glares. “I didn’t ask if you had a Social Security number. I asked if you had a Social Security card. No card, no food stamps. Go to Social Security, bring back proof you’ve reapplied.” She gives me the name of my food stamp counselor and tells me to make an appointment with him.

The next day I show the counselor proof from Social Security. I sign more papers. He says to wait in the lobby for my food stamp card.

“How long?” I ask anxiously.

The counselor fidgets. “Uh, an hour.”

Two hours pass. I approach the food stamp window and ask: “ Something wrong with my paperwork? My counselor said it would only take an hour. “

The clerk, a stout woman in her late 30s, growls: “He is not telling you the truth! He knows better!”

The clerk is uptight, wired, on edge. An hour earlier, a new applicant, a burly man, went berserk. First, he drove his foot through the reinforced window in Interview Booth No. 1. Then he methodically kicked out four other interview windows. Flying shards cut one worker. Others fled the building or sealed themselves in an interior office. A worker says: “ We thought he might climb through the window and attack us. We started locking doors, bunching together. “

Officer Gatlin had been eating lunch in his van. Alerted via walkie-talkie, he dashed to the interview cubicles and helped another officer handcuff the man. “Things didn’t go right for him,” Gatlin reflects. “He couldn’t handle it.” The jammed lobby is buzzing at the arrival of a squad car from the Los Angeles Police Department and, later, paramedics. There is little sympathy for the welfare staff. Someone snaps: “Welfare think they baaad behind the glass. Dude kicks in the glass, they ain’t bad no more--they scared.”

My temporary food stamp card is issued 30 minutes later. The nearest “food stamp outlet”--a private check-cashing operation that also distributes food stamps--is several miles away. I am entitled to only $40 for the remainder of this month, but for some reason, I receive next month’s allotment as well--another $112. They are contained in booklets from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They look like oversized Monopoly money in denominations of $1, $5 and $10. The food stamp clerk advises: “Use ‘em just like cash at any major market. No booze, smokes or paper products like toilet paper or paper towels.” The program is limited only to the purchase of food products.

At the market, I load my basket with assorted groceries. The bill is $40.25. The clerk takes $41 in stamps, and gives me 75 cents change. I avoid eye contact with others in the checkout line. The next day, I receive my permanent food stamp card. It is plastic with a magnetic strip and is good for 11 months. No more visits to the welfare office. As of this writing, it is still valid, even though I never presented my counselor with my new Social Security card as required. I will return it, along with my remaining food stamps and a check for the stamps I used while reporting this story.

BACK AT THE WELFARE OFFICE, JOHN OFFERS: “I KNOW WHERE YOU CAN sell your food stamps for 40 cents on the dollar.” I decline.

The food stamp black market is considerable. Last year, for example, two men were convicted in federal court in Los Angeles of setting up phony stores to redeem $2.1 million in food stamps that they bought cut-rate from welfare recipients. They were sentenced to three years and one month in federal prison.

To help counteract trafficking, California and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are drafting a pilot program for Los Angeles County to add six investigators specializing in food stamp fraud, says Back of the state welfare fraud unit. “The feds,” he says, “have been hampered by a lack of investigators.”

But nabbing small fry like John and Angela is Mission Impossible. Los Angeles County has 174 welfare fraud investigators and supervisors, says Lowquilla Grenier, head of the fraud section. “We had 52,742 investigations last year,” she notes. Of those, Grenier says her staff detected $29.1 million in undeserved payments and recovered $11.6 million. Grenier estimates that an additional $112 million in potential undeserved aid was “stopped at the front door” through early detection. She declines to estimate how much fraud slips by. But Grenier does allow that “We have a need for more investigators.”

John and Angela seem unconcerned about getting caught for double-dipping--applying for food stamps and cash in Nevada, California, elsewhere. “We work Vegas and L.A.,” John explains over a beer. We sit in a bar next to the cheap but clean hotel where he and Angela are staying at county expense for two weeks.

“The system sucks,” Angela says. “We apply every time as a married couple to stay in one room, but they always give us two vouchers for two rooms. We give the guy who runs the hotel the other voucher so he can collect twice from welfare. He gives us an extra-nice room even if he’s gotta kick somebody out.”

To get vouchers and welfare checks, John and Angela, like other General Relief recipients, must do cleanup work for the county. “They give us little plastic bags and we pick up cigarette butts, gum wrappers, stuff like that,” Angela says. To insure that they get soft jobs, John and Angela wear thongs instead of boots on work assignment day.

“We tell ‘em we don’t have shoes,” John explains. “That way we get easy duty. They don’t want us dropping a rake on our foot and suing their ass off.”

When their California checks and food stamps are issued, John and Angela return to Las Vegas to collect their Nevada welfare benefits. They also make welfare forays into Oregon and Arizona. “We work hard at it. We do OK,” John says. “We got an apartment with a pool in Las Vegas . . . .”

Welfare officials concede that the system is easily beatable. “If somebody comes into California from Nevada for a couple months--hit and run--they can probably get away with collecting from both states,” Back says.

In Nevada, Mike Willden, deputy administrator of the state’s welfare system, says: “When someone applies in Nevada, we try to find out where they came from and run a spot check. We don’t dish out welfare like California. Heck, there’s more people on welfare in one district office in L.A. than the whole state of Nevada.”

SCREENING NEW APPLICANTS IS THE MOST THANKLESS, STRESSFUL JOB IN welfare. “I’m getting more and more discouraged,” says Lisa Hayes, 32, who until October was a screener in West Los Angeles. “There’s got to be some other, better way to help people.”

Hayes was selected by welfare officials to be interviewed for this story--in the presence of a supervisor. Hayes recalls her optimism, idealism, when she was first hired in 1990. “I thought I could help people. . . . All the veterans said to me: ‘I give you a year before you lose it, burn out.’ Well, they were wrong. It took me two years. But now, I want out of here . . . some other job in the system. I still want to help people, but I don’t want to do this anymore.” Hayes says she tries to process 15 to 20 people a day.

“The system forces them to lie,” Hayes says. “We know that. Sometimes, people lie on some questions, tell the truth on others and trip themselves up--like saying they are homeless on one page and then putting down a home address on the next page. But when they pretty much have their stuff together, the right answers, even though we sense something is wrong, we have to put them through and hope they get caught down the line. We can’t--we try not to--spend more than 15, 20 minutes on any one person.”

Some, however, demand more attention. “I get mental cases every day. As soon as they get released from institutions, jails, they come right down here.” The mentally ill and addicts, often unable to participate in the work programs, tend to wind up in institutions, jails or the streets.

Homeless people can be the nastiest. “We understand where they’re coming from,” Hayes says. “They’re up all night protecting themselves. No sleep. Hungry, desperate. They need their food stamps real bad, and they didn’t get them. I’m the first person they see. They can be abusive. They think the louder they get, the more they’ll get away with,” Hayes says. “I find myself getting upset, but I can’t show it or let them know they’re getting to me. I just smile and say, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ ”

What bothers Hayes the most are “regular folks” who, through no fault of their own, have been laid off, displaced, alienated. Victims of the lingering, festering, California depression.

“The California Dream has lost its charm,” she says. “I see a lot of people in their 40s and 50s that have worked all their lives, but, because of the California economy, have lost their jobs. Their unemployment has run out, but they’re still hanging on to their car and house.” Hayes’ face tightens. The words come slowly. “But I have to tell them, ‘I still cannot help you until you have less than $50 in the bank and sell your car. I still cannot help you until you have nothing, no assets, no money, nuthin’.” Sometimes they start crying, break down. They want somebody to listen. I do. I hand them a tissue. I let them cry and tell me their troubles even if it takes an hour. I’ll just work harder to move the others through quicker.”

I ask Hayes if she is ever tempted to “help out” real hard-luck cases by feeding them right answers, bending rules. Hayes glances at the supervisor monitoring our interview. Her answer is firm: “I can’t. I’m not going to risk my survival over any applicant. These people will say anything--tell a supervisor I gave them information . . . . I’m not going to risk being stabbed in the back, losing my job.” Eligibility workers like Hayes earn from $1,834 to $2,274 a month.

“I’m separated from my husband,” Hayes says. “I’m a working mother. I have two children that depend on me.” Her children, a boy, 10, and a girl, 12, Hayes says, are her life. “Everything revolves around my kids. When I go home, I leave the job behind. I’ll never survive if I take it with me. Sometimes, I can’t even handle it at work. I have limits, too. I know when I’m about to blow. If I can’t deal with it, I go to my supervisor and say, ‘I don’t have the best attitude. I cannot go out there and see them today.’ ” Then, Hayes says, she is assigned to a desk job for the day.

Since this interview, she has started a new job in a county program to help welfare recipients find work.

Hayes’ former boss, Shirley Christensen, who began as a clerk 28 years ago, says: “It’s very hard to come in here each day and kick into high gear to do this kind of work. I have to cut my people a little slack. We have to work together. We’re 30- to 50% understaffed from what we used to have.” Christensen says her staff of 160 has a caseload of 26,000. “What we see in this lobby is what’s going on in Los Angeles,” she says. “It’s a scary change. My staff--they know how vulnerable they really are.”

MANY OF LOS ANGELES County’s welfare offices have security as tight as Los Angeles International Airport. Metal detectors. Video monitors. Armed guards. Steel doors. Panic buttons. Security was increased here after a welfare worker was stabbed to death in 1989. Despite the increased security, crime and violence in welfare offices rose from 299 incidents a month in 1991 to 364 a month last year.

“A lot of those welfare offices are 90% gangbangers and the worst scum off the street,” says Angela. “I carry a five-inch blade in my boot and I’m not afraid to use it. But no way do you bring a weapon to welfare. They’ll kick your butt out right now.” Her favorite district office is in West Los Angeles because she feels it is the safest.

Still, there is a siege mentality among the workers. Dealing with recipients is called working on “The Frontline.” One worker’s placard: “Help me to remember, Lord, that nothing will happen today that you and I can’t handle together.”

Nina Guttman, a deputy district director at the office and a 24-year veteran, says without hesitation that she and her staff owe their safety to security officers like David Gatlin. “We know he’s there when we need him,” Guttman adds.

A graduate of Fremont High School, Gatlin says he became an insurance agent but always longed to be a cop, and finally switched careers in 1989. He says his daily 6:45 a.m. speech to the applicants bunched at the door is designed “to end confusion ‘cause that’s what leads to stress and anger. They have got to know what to expect.”

To some, Gatlin’s 12-minute lecture may seem crude, sarcastic, insensitive. To Gatlin, it is the only way to communicate with the desperate and destitute.

For example, he warns: “Feel free to use the chairs that have table tops as long as you are actively completing the application. No other activity . . . . You cannot sit there eating, sleeping, reading or engaged in polite conversation. To emphasize that point, if you are engaged in any other activity . . . you will be assessed a fine payable immediately in cash of $5,000--or death. Either pay us the money or we’ll kill you on the spot.” Gatlin pauses. A smile flickers.

“Well, since the Rodney King development we can no longer kill you on the spot. We have to take you to the back and kill you--no cameras back there.” Gatlin pauses again. Most applicants smile or laugh. Some don’t. Gatlin continues: “Well, by now you all should realize that nothing contained in that last statement had any semblance of the truth. You realize that, don’t you? We all realize that was humor, right? Some of you are not nodding! . . . OK, seriously, though, folks, once you have completed your application . . . .”

Gatlin always finishes with: “Good luck today, folks. I hope it works out better than you anticipated.” Often, it doesn’t.

Early one recent afternoon, a tall, gaunt man slams both fists on the counter and snarls: “Where’s my worker?” His snarl becomes a scream: “ You people been jacking me up all day! “

His clothes are soiled. His face, neck and forearms are flecked with scar tissue from knife and razor. His nose is flattened. His eyes are bloodshot. Dried spittle cakes the corners of his mouth. “ DAMN YOU PEOPLE! I’M READY TO BLOW! “

Gatlin quickly moves to the man’s side and whispers in his ear. His voice is soothing, fatherly: “Hey man, I’m gonna give you the opportunity to walk away like a man, or I’m gonna drag you out like a dog. Your choice.”

Their eyes lock. The gaunt man shrugs, sighs, nods.