Group Aiding Blind Must Find New Location

A financially strapped program for visually impaired San Fernando Valley residents is facing closure unless it can relocate this month. The nonprofit Visually Handicapped Adults of the Valley has three weeks to find a new home.

The group’s lease at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys expired Dec. 31, but the church has agreed to allow the group to stay a few weeks longer to avoid closing the program that serves about 150 Valley residents.

St. Mark’s, which plans to renovate its buildings, gave the group several months to find a new home, said the program’s director, Nick Perrott.

Last spring, the group asked for and received several months of free rent, according to Helen Harris, president of the organization and its parent group, Retinitis Pigmentosa International, which raises funds for research into Retinitis Pigmentosa, a disease that causes blindness. The church agreed, Harris said, but asked the group to look for new quarters.

The Rev. Gary Hand of St. Mark’s declined to comment.

But finding a new location proved a daunting task.

“Basically, they were unsuccessful with their plans and we find ourselves behind the 8 ball,” Perrott said.

Visually Handicapped Adults, which has operated out of St. Mark’s for the past six years, was started in 1972 by the late Sophia Myers, a nurse who lost her sight.

It has an annual budget of about $300,000, with $130,000 of that coming from city grants, said Helen Harris, president of the Retinitis agency. The rest comes from private donations, which have been slow in recent years.

About 150 people come to the center three days a week for independent living training, craft classes, typing, support sessions and on Thursday, for bowling day. The program has supplied vans to pick up participants at home and bring them to St. Mark’s.

“We help each other and it helps to bear,” said Gizella Laszloffy, known as Lassie by most in the program. “Blindness is a terrible thing, a shocking thing.”

The 82-year-old former nurse’s sight began to deteriorate 33 years ago and now she sees only blurs. “It’s hazy. Like you’re in a deep fog,” Laszloffy said.

Frank A. Camarillo Jr. said the center taught him to survive.

After his poor sight nearly caused an automobile accident in 1979, Camarillo’s driver’s license was revoked. He abandoned his upholstery business and withdrew. But four years ago, Camarillo tired of self-pity and came to the center.

“The center has given me my dignity,” he said.