Nirvana? Or Nowheresville? : Lifestyle: Parents moved to the foothills for ‘peace and quiet.’ That translates into ‘nothing to do’ in adolescentspeak.

It’s Friday night and Ryan (Red) Walker of Rancho Santa Margarita is faced with the same question that’s on the minds of many South County foothill community teen-agers come the weekend: What’s there to do?

“Nothing--not anywhere close,” said the 17-year-old Trabuco Hills High School student, seated with a handful of his buddies at a table in front of a coffee shop in the Trabuco Hills Center.

The strip shopping center in northern Mission Viejo, nearly five miles from the heart of Rancho Santa Margarita, is the closest thing to night life for foothill community teen-agers who otherwise must drive even farther out of the area for entertainment.

Said 16-year-old Kendra Kofro, whose family moved to Rancho Santa Margarita six years ago: “The community is all based on young families and children.” But for teen-agers, “there’s nothing to do really. We were just in Longs (drugstore) deciding what to do. We’ll probably just go to somebody’s house or something.”

Residents of South County’s foothill communities--which include Rancho Santa Margarita, Coto de Caza, Dove Canyon, Portola Hills, Foothill Ranch and Robinson Ranch--may overwhelmingly view their area as a favorable place to live (82%, according to The Times Orange County Poll). But the same rural isolation that their parents relish is, for many teen-agers, the area’s major drawback.

As Coto de Caza resident Bill Cowdrey, 34, put it: “I love it because there’s nothing to do. It’s peaceful, and that’s why the kids don’t like it.”

“I think the problem of bored teen-agers is one that the suburbs have always struggled with,” said Times pollster Mark Baldassare, a UC Irvine urban sociologist.

The problem, however, is given short shrift by foothill community adults. A scant 3% of poll respondents named the lack of activities for teens as the biggest problem facing their communities.

But while teen-agers may grumble about having nothing to do, their elders overwhelmingly view the South County foothill communities as an ideal place to raise children.

Indeed, the area is one that prides itself on being family-oriented, and there are numerous organized sporting activities for children--witness the nearly 3,000 foothill community parents and children who turned out at a Rancho Santa Margarita park on a recent Saturday morning for the opening day of Little League.

“It’s a community that’s set up for families,” said Craig Lipus, 38, of Portola Hills, waiting for his 10-year-old son, Garrett, to parade by. “It’s like everybody has two kids and either a Volvo wagon or a Suburban.”

With a laugh, the father of three added: “I just bought a Suburban last night.”

Are there many activities for younger children living in the 5,000-acre master-planned “urban village” of Rancho Santa Margarita?

“Scads,” said Phyllis Spruill, a Rancho Santa Margarita mother of two young sons.

“Probably too much,” added her husband, James, with a chuckle.

“I can’t do it all,” agreed his wife. “There are lots of opportunities for parents to get involved with their children. That’s one of the assets I see out here.”

Nearly nine in 10 poll respondents strongly agree the foothill communities are a good place to raise children. Residents are far more positive about the area’s suitability for kids than people living in South County (56%) or North County (36%) are about their communities.

In line with that view, foothill community residents are much more likely than the rest of the county to be raising children. Fifty-four percent of households have children at home, compared to 43% countywide.

Living in a more rural community, added James Spruill, “gives you more of a sense of security than in larger cities.”

About half of foothill community residents, according to the Times poll, are convinced that their neighborhoods are separate and distinct from the rest of the county and safe from crime and gangs.

Foothill community residents also are considerably more secure about their children’s safety at school or in their neighborhoods than are residents countywide. Only 13% say they worry “a great deal” about their children becoming crime victims at school or in their neighborhoods. Countywide, 43% worry a lot.

Residents of the foothill communities have reason to feel more secure. They live in an area where crime, when it does occur, typically amounts to no more than residential and property crimes.

For “as many people (who) are living out there, the crime rate is really rather low,” said Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Larry Jones, who knows of no gangs in any of the foothill communities, and other than a few isolated incidents of graffiti, he is not aware of any problems with teen-agers.

That doesn’t mean they don’t get into mischief.

Coto de Caza resident Cowdrey said he has noticed a growing problem with vandalism to public facilities within his gated community. “I haven’t seen graffiti, but they break light bulbs, knock over (structures) and have damaged the golf course on occasion.” And, he said, someone “drove a four-wheel (drive) vehicle onto the greens a year or so ago.”

Cowdrey emphasizes that “we have some great teens, but I think that inactivity can get them in trouble. They don’t have a lot of positive things to do.”

Richard Thompson, 43, a Rancho Santa Margarita father of two, laments the lack of things for teen-agers to do.

He said his 14-year-old daughter is involved in Explorer Scouts and takes classes at a martial arts school one night a week, “but there’s really no place kids can go here except Taco Bell or Burger King.”

Kofro, a sophomore at Trabuco Hills High School, said she would like to see a miniature golf course in Rancho Santa Margarita. Or a bowling alley. Or just “a place to hang out, like a Family Fun Center.”

The lack of entertainment for Rancho Santa Margarita and other foothill community teens prompts many of them to head to the Trabuco Hills Center and the adjacent Portola Plaza in northern Mission Viejo.

Once there, though, they are under the watchful eye of uniformed security guards.

Although a recent Friday night was uneventful, the two centers have a history of attracting throngs of teen-agers who don’t always go unnoticed by adult patrons.

Complains Portola Hills resident Lipus: “I have a problem when I drive through (Portola Plaza) and there are 20 of them sitting in their cars smoking cigarettes and you ask them to move and they look at you and say something rude.”

Even Sheriff’s Department Lt. Dan Martini, who lives near the two shopping centers, said the “sometimes rude” teen-agers sitting outside Diedrich’s coffeehouse make him and his wife so uncomfortable they have started going to a different coffee shop.

The Taco Bell in Portola Plaza has been the flash point of many of the problems at the two centers.

“It’s the natural draw because of the (low) price of their food,” said Sheriff’s patrol Sgt. Fred Lisanti, who is assigned to Mission Viejo Police Services. “What happens is you get a lot of kids who go there who are not doing anything wrong, but then you get the 5% or 10% who appear to be bad kids.

“We’ve had some fights, minors drinking alcohol, and there have been some allegations of sales of narcotics and that kind of stuff occurring,” he said.

But Lisanti said the problems in the two shopping centers have decreased dramatically over the past five months since the hiring of security guards, stricter enforcement and the presence of the Delta Unit, a special Sheriff’s Department undercover unit.

Although Martini acknowledges that the situation has improved, he emphasizes that it has yet to be solved.

“It irritates me to hear kids tell me, ‘We don’t have anything else to do’ and ‘This is the only place we have to go,’ ” he said. “What it tells me is maybe in that child’s mind that’s true, but to me it’s something the parents need to be aware of if there’s that lack of recreation. Maybe it’s a matter of transporting them to the right location to get them involved in the right activities.”

Foothill Ranch teen-agers can at least look forward to a 24-screen AMC movie theater opening in the first part of 1995 in the community’s new Towne Centre, and a cinema complex is also planned for the ongoing development of Rancho Santa Margarita’s Town Center throughout the ‘90s.

But there are no current plans either for a Family Fun Center type of facility or an indoor teen center in Rancho Santa Margarita, according to Santa Margarita Co. spokeswoman Diane Gaynor.

Although they haven’t ruled out a teen center, she said, they have found in looking at youth centers in other communities that while the centers provide activities for teens, they also may attract problems.

To avoid creating a potentially troublesome “congregation point” for teen-agers, she said, they have found that the key is not necessarily providing a place but activities and programs for teens.

And the best way to do that, she said, seems to be community involvement.

In Rancho Santa Margarita, she said, most teen activities such as dances, athletics, clubs and holiday events are offered through the schools, churches, the YMCA and the Community Activities and Service Assn., or CASA, a volunteer group that organizes local events.

South County’s new foothill communities, of course, don’t own the franchise on teens with little to do.

The suburbs, pollster Baldassare said, “tend to do much better at creating environments for families with young children than for adolescents, and this is because many of the amenities which teens would like nearby tend to be just the kind which older suburb residents try to keep away because they bring noise and traffic and crime and other problems.”

The lack of things to do for teen-agers, Baldassare said, “puts special pressures on high schools and other institutions to take up the slack.”

And if teen-agers don’t find good things to do in the neighborhoods, Baldassare said, “chances are they’re going to go elsewhere and that could lead to problems with gangs or getting into other sorts of trouble. But this is an area the suburbs have been criticized for as long I’ve studied them: what to do with teens.”

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SUNDAY: A look at the people who live in Orange County’s southern foothills--and why.

MONDAY: The recession had a crushing impact on residents, who saw their home values drop, and on many developers, who had to restructure their plans.

TODAY: Families are flocking to the new suburbs, where parents praise the many activities for youngsters. But for the teens, there’s not much to do.

WEDNESDAY: Living so far out means secluded neighborhoods and horrendous commutes. Though access is improving, traffic congestion remains a problem.

THURSDAY: Two-thirds of foothill residents expect to be living in the area when 1999 rolls around. But what does that future hold?

THE SOUTHERN FOOTHILLS: Havens for Children

Far more residents in Orange County’s suburban frontier see their communities as good places to raise children than do residents elsewhere in the county. They also feel more secure about their children’s safety. However, North County residents are more likely to think their communities are convenient places to live.

* Agree or disagree that their community is:

Strongly Somewhat agree agree Disagree A good place to raise children 88% 10% 2% Separate, distinct from rest of O.C. 55 33 12 Safe from problems of crime and gangs 50 39 11 A convenient place to live 44 40 16 A place with lots of things to do 44 39 17

* “Strongly agree” that their community is:

Parents Non-parents A good place to raise children 90% 85% Separate and distinct from O.C. 56 54 Safe from crime and gangs 47 53 A convenient place to live 42 48 A place with lots of things to do 45 42

Southern South North foothills County County A good place to raise children 88% 56% 36% A convenient place to live 44 43 62

* Percent with children 18 or younger living at home: Southern foothills: 54% Orange County: 43%

* How much do you worry that your children could be the victims of crime and violence in your neighborhood or in the local schools?

Southern foothills Orange County Great deal 13% 43% Somewhat 28 28 A little 42 19 Not at all 17 10

Sources: Times Orange County Polls 1994, 1989; 1993 Orange County Annual Survey, UCI