Centerpiece : Reading Between the Signs : Grocery store bulletin boards give people a forum for selling services or just reaching out to others.

It read, simply: “A loving mother will baby-sit in your T.O. home.”

That was it, except for a phone number. But there seemed to be an urgency in the note tacked to the community bulletin board outside Ralphs supermarket on East Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks--perhaps it was the three other ads, all identical to the first, and within several feet of one another on the wall.

A passing glance at the board wouldn’t cause one to stop and consider the fate of this “loving mother.” She fought for attention amid a crowd.

There was the “Lost Grey Schnauzer” named Frea, who disappeared while on a visit from Nevada; Ken Gresiak’s Crystal Clear Pool & Spa Service, and various earthquake repair and inspection operations.

“Do you know anyone who has a health concern? (High blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, asthma, etc?)” The ad said, “50 people are needed immediately for a Doctor Recommended Advanced Nutrition program. Satisfaction is guaranteed. Call now!”

A guy named Dinu was trying to sell an ’81 Honda Accord with “new tires, brakes and drive shaft, rebuilt transmission and radiator.” But it did need some power steering work. Dinu informed prospective buyers that he “must sell immediately, moving out of state.”

“For Sale,” called another ad. “Cradle, rocker, play pen, rocker horse, umbrella carriage, walker, potty seat and more.” Some ads needed little explanation.

Community bulletin boards, like bus terminals, are about people: people in flux, people seeking change or people just looking to make some money. And people reaching out to other people.

“In a world in which we have fewer formal places for people to gather, they choose informal ways of communication,” said Marie Butler, professor of sociology at Oxnard College. “Bulletin boards are a way people can communicate with each other.”

We spent a week chasing down ads at the bulletin board at Ralphs in Thousand Oaks, one of the busier boards in Ventura County. It is not owned by the store, but by TV Fanfare Publications, a 42-year-old Valencia-based company.

TV Fanfare has been in the business of community bulletin boards--or, as folks there refer to them, Market Information Centers, since 1966. The company rents the boards to area merchants. “We’re at most of the major grocery chains,” said Tom Tudman, the company’s senior vice president.

“They are very popular with people in the community who are not only looking for a place to rent, or selling their refrigerators,” said Keith Sonne, TV Fanfare vice president, “but also for baby-sitting jobs, lost bikes, all sorts of community events where they would otherwise have to take out an ad in the paper or clutter up a window.”

Sonne said the company has boards in 42 states. He estimated that upward of 14,000 people will pass a single grocery store bulletin board each week.

We were among the throngs passing the bulletin board in Thousand Oaks, hoping to get to know some of the people behind the pushpins.

‘House Cleaning With a Touch of Class’

Want to see a grown man jump for joy?

Mention “porcini mushrooms” to Adriano Bertolotti and he’s liable to get a tear in his eye. He’ll most definitely share with you the virtues of the aromatic Italian fungi--how wonderful they are in a tomato-based lasagna sauce.

Bertolotti, a resident of Wood Ranch, depends on the virtues of the mushroom for the success of his enterprising “Clean and or Cook” service.

His business card was among the more attractive on the Ralphs bulletin board. It certainly was the most intriguing, with its silhouette of a man in sweater and tie, vacuuming alongside the slogan “House Cleaning Service With a Touch of Class.”

That class comes in the form of reasonably priced gourmet meals that Bertolotti prepares for clients, if they desire, with or without a house-cleaning.

“This appeals to working couples in particular. It’s nice for them to come home to a clean house and have a gourmet meal prepared for them. I’m like a third member of the family,” he said. “The kind of people I meet run the gamut--professionals, doctors, dentists, people in the movie industry. They say, ‘Oh Adriano, what are you going to cook for me this week?’ ”

Bertolotti, 43, took over the business (formerly called “Clean and Cook,” he added the “or”) from his mother, Anna, in 1992. He had relocated to the United States from the Caribbean as his mother was heading home to Italy to care for Bertolotti’s terminally ill grandmother.

“My mother can cook anything,” said Bertolotti. “She can look in your cabinets and make a gourmet meal out of whatever is there.” And it’s his mother who keeps Bertolotti supplied with porcini, which she sends from Italy by UPS.

Son credits mother and grandmother for passing along the family culinary skills. Growing up in Parma, Italy, and later in Montreal, Canada, he was taught to prepare elaborate meals. After graduating from college in Montreal, he headed for the Cayman Islands, he said, where for a while he and his buddies owned some restaurants.

Bertolotti plans to return to the restaurant business in Ventura County, but not yet. “The economy is not right now,” he said. “But I want to keep in practice, build a clientele.”

And of course, earning some money in the meantime doesn’t hurt. His strategy: advertise, advertise.

“We did flyers, went door to door, and whoever has a bulletin board available, whenever I’m shopping I just put in a card,” he said.

He said bulletin board ads tend to have longer life spans than do flyers.

“With flyers, people take them and put them in the garbage and never see them again,” he said. “Bulletin board ads are always in your face. They are always there. If people pick up my card, it is because they need it. When flyers come to your house, it’s doubtful you need the service.”

The other attractive characteristic about bulletin board ads, said Bertolotti, is that they cost nothing. “Newspaper ads cost money if you run them on a regular basis,” he said, “and unless you run them on a regular basis, they aren’t current.”

Bertolotti said in 1 1/2 years of bulletin board advertising, he’s added about a dozen clients. Despite this success, Bertolotti has had to deal with a competitive aspect of bulletin board advertising.

“I used to advertise at Mrs. Gooch’s, but because I cook better lasagna than they do,” he said, “they kept taking the ads down.”

‘A Loving Mother Will Baby-Sit’

The loving mother is Marcella Samuelson who, when she placed her ad on the first day of February, was living with her 13-year-old son, Erik, in a beautiful two-story home in Simi Valley’s Wood Ranch development.

A portrait of Samuelson’s husband and blond children hung along the staircase. Pictures of Italy (Samuelson grew up in the town of Sorrento) hung near the front door. A photo of her children aboard a gondola in Venice was positioned just outside the kitchen.

But Samuelson was in the process of heading in an entirely different direction: east, in fact.

The Samuelson home was in escrow, Samuelson’s husband, Robert, was in Colorado Springs, transferred there in December by his employer, Federal Express, and the family had already bid on a home there.

Erik and his mother were waiting for the school year to end at St. Paschal Baylon School in Thousand Oaks before joining up with dad. Daughter Denise, 20, was a student at UC Santa Barbara.

Samuelson, 53, placed her ad in the hopes of finding a job that would earn her enough money to pay for three months rent at a new place or, preferably, provide her with three months live-in accommodations. Most importantly, she was looking for anything that would let her work with young children.

“I have done baby-sitting and I have been a cook,” said Samuelson, who used to prepare meals for the nuns at Loyola-Marymount University. “But mostly I’ve been a mother, and I’m proud of it.”

Samuelson figured her best chance of finding an employer was by advertising her services on a bulletin board. So she hit about a half-dozen grocery store boards in the Thousand Oaks area.

“In everyday life people go to the market. It was a way to reach out that is very simple, very human,” she said.

Samuelson said she welcomed the relative anonymity of the peg boards. “It was somehow low profile,” she said. “I don’t speak the language so well.”

Samuelson prefers her initial contact to be written, not spoken. “My feeling was that if you don’t speak too well, they will discriminate against you,” she said.

Uly’s Monogramming

Thousand Oaks resident Ulrike Boecker has a sense of humor.

On Dec. 1, the native of Elbing-Ostpreussen, Germany, legally became an American citizen, something she had wanted for most of her 33 years in the United States.

On Dec. 2 she found a summons for jury duty in her mailbox.

Like many Americans, Boecker asked the court for a postponement. Unlike many Americans, she asked for only one, and last month she served on her first jury.

“It was quite an experience,” said Boecker, in a still-thick German accent. “One that I would not like to miss.”

But it wasn’t just the patriotism of it all that gave Boecker such warm feelings about her role in the American judicial system. She took the opportunity to mingle with fellow jurors, and to pass out her new business cards. They are like the card she attached to the Ralphs bulletin board that touted “Uly’s Monogramming & Embroidery.”

“I do mostly towels,” said Boecker, who works on a computerized embroidery machine. “You can make the most ordinary towels look really good.” All the relatives got towels and to further hone her craft, she monogrammed innumerable shirt pockets for husband Willy and 16-year-old son, Andy.

“I did my son’s luggage, his umbrella,” said Boecker, who counts among her clients Boy Scout Troop 716 of Thousand Oaks. “I had to stop with the socks.”

As loyal as her family was, Boecker, naturally, wanted to find other clients. She took a strategic approach to her placement of bulletin board ads. “I’ve had cards at Mrs. Gooch’s, Vons and Ralphs,” she said. “Housewives go shopping and usually they are the ones who want to have the monogramming done.”

‘Changing People’s Lives’

“It provides the body with all the nutrients it needs, and if it can heal itself it will,” said Gary Deppen, about a line of nutritional supplements he distributes locally. “It’s literally changing people’s lives.”

His comments were nearly as persuasive as the green ad he had attached to the Ralphs bulletin board: “Is what you are doing now going to pay you $8,000 per month working less that 40 hours per week? If the answer is no. . . .”

Selling a nutritional powder and creating a network of salespeople, something he’s been doing full time since June, is a long way from where Deppen started.

Deppen, 49, was a Navy electrician from 1963 to 1967, stationed for the most part aboard ship in San Diego. “Our job was to repair other ships damaged in the Vietnam War,” he said. “My job was the electrical part of it, electrical motors, fixing electrical damage.”

After some post-service vagabonding with a military buddy, Deppen settled down and joined up with GTE.

“I was with GTE for 25 years, but I knew the real way to make money was to be self-employed,” he said. “I’m building a company now that is going to be worth a million and I have no overhead and no employees.”

Deppen has been very creative in drumming up customers.

“If I go out to dinner, I’ll leave an ad with the tip,” he said, “or standing in line at the grocery store I’ll talk to people.”

But Deppen said he has found the greatest success with newspaper ads and supermarket bulletin boards.

“If I put postcards on a couple of bulletin boards, I’ll get four or five calls a day,” he said. “I focus on five boards, all grocery stores. There are other boards I could do, like at Laundromats, but I haven’t found them too successful.”