VAN NUYS : YMCA Extends Child Care for Quake Victims

As a single mother raising three children, Teresa Olea struggled to find day care for her three children so she could return to work after the Jan. 17 earthquake.

“I was so worried,” said Olea, 37, who missed a week of work because she could not find day care. “For two days, I brought them with me to work.”

Olea, who works for Electro Adapter in Chatsworth, said because she feared that something might happen to the children, she could barely concentrate on her work.

That was until the Mid-Valley YMCA opened its doors the week after the quake to provide extended day care for children unable to attend school. Although the building that houses the YMCA had suffered minor damage, staff members worked vigorously in the days following the quake to clean up and prepare for providing child care.

“Without them, I don’t know what I would do with my kids,” Olea said. “They saved my life.”

The Red Cross reported that 365 people are staying in four Red Cross shelters in Van Nuys and 96 are living in the community’s parks.

About 50 of those families took advantage of the extended day care, officials said. The center did not charge for the extended care and lengthened its hours to accommodate parents in the disaster, opening at 6:30 a.m. and closing at 6:30 p.m. Normal hours are 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Staff members coaxed the children to express their feelings about the earthquake, giving them paper and crayons to draw the effects of the quake on their homes, and talking about each child’s experience, said Dave Newman, senior program director at the YMCA. Although many of the older children were able to express themselves, the smaller children, Newman said, still clung to their fears.

“I have been sleeping next to this little girl here until she falls asleep everyday since the earthquake,” said Adelyn Thimote, director of the preschool there. “All the children are feeling very insecure.”

“Everything fell down,” said 6-year-old Jonpatrick Edjedawe. “It made me feel very bad.”

Meanwhile, the YMCA staff members were dealing with their own disasters. Newman said he was worried about his wife, who gave birth to their fourth child days after the temblor. He said his Simi Valley house was in shambles, forcing him to move his family to a nearby hotel while he worked at the center.

“We had our own problems, but we were there for the community,” Newman said. About 10 out of the center’s 60 staff members lost their homes or were displaced by the quake, he said.

The center also expanded their “shower hours” from a half-hour to 10 hours so people in the parks could utilize them.

Although important, day care wasn’t the only thing on Olea’s mind.

After her Van Nuys apartment was damaged in the quake, her family moved to the Van Nuys Recreation Center.

“I had to stay in the park for four days with my kids,” Olea said. “They were coughing a lot and I was feeling so terrible,” she said. “Besides the earthquake, we were on the street with no place to go. I was very frustrated and anxious.”

Olea said her two youngest children, Lydia, 6, and Eric, 4, caught colds, forcing her to move back into her apartment building in a less damaged unit.

Since separating from her husband two years ago, Olea has depended on the YMCA for child care.