1,500 Volunteers Mount 2nd Annual Effort to Clean Up L.A.

Liz Gonzalez wanted her nephew to learn about Los Angeles, about something more than the familiar images of earthquakes, fires and riots. She wanted to give 8-year-old Esteban Serrano a truer portrait of her city.

So on Saturday, she made him plant a tree. Along with dozens of other volunteers, Gonzalez and her nephew helped root 250 apricot trees along a bare strip of Arroyo Seco Park.

“I wanted to show him what we’re all about,” said Gonzalez, packing the dirt around a newly planted sapling destined to blossom and bear fruit. “This city isn’t about rebellion. It isn’t about fires and earthquakes. It’s about people working together and it’s about a spirit of community.”

That same spirit moved more than 1,500 volunteers to fan out across Los Angeles on Saturday in a massive one-day urban renewal effort.

The second-annual Work-A-Thon, sponsored by the nonprofit L.A. Works, matched volunteers with community service projects in areas from Northridge to Long Beach. Near Echo Park, volunteers helped spruce up a center for pregnant teen-agers. Along the Los Angeles River, they picked up trash and plucked rusted shopping carts from the river bottom.

In all, nearly 40 projects were tackled by city officials, company executives and hundreds of other volunteers who gave up their Saturday to lend a hand to a city that in recent years has had its share of hard luck.

“What we’ve really tried to do is highlight community service concerns in Los Angeles,” said Bob Johnson, co-chairman of L.A. Works. The group seeks to provide a labor force for volunteer projects while bridging the gap between communities, rich and poor.

“We still have a long way to go,” Johnson said. “But it’s evolving and we think it’s capturing the spirit of Los Angeles.”

Volunteers met Saturday in Exposition Park, where they gathered into teams and prepared for a long day of work. Actress Whoopi Goldberg, battling the flu, managed to walk on stage and deliver some words of inspiration.

“This is an honorable thing,” she said. “It’s not forced. It’s something you choose to do. If we can wake other people up to choose to volunteer, I think it will do us a lot of good.”

About 50 volunteers boarded Bus 32 and headed to the edge of a graffiti-scarred neighborhood bordering the Los Angeles River.

Once there, workers began picking up piles of trash dumped along the concrete banks of the river. Braver souls marched into the thick vegetation below, encountering shopping carts and abandoned homeless encampments.

Karl Frederick was the first to wade through this jungle, explaining how much of the junk washes downstream during storms and eventually finds its way to the ocean.

“This city needs me, it needs all of us,” he said, pulling out his fourth shopping cart of the day. “If nothing else, I’m building up good karma. In a mean city, you need all of the good luck you can get.”

Near Echo Park, a small army of volunteers helped turn an old Baptist church into a center for pregnant teen-agers and their babies. The Parent and Special Infant Toddler Program is planning to move into the center across from St. Anne’s Maternity Home.

Mark Wagar, president of Cigna HealthCare of California, led a team of workers helping in the transformation effort.

“You just can’t be a corporate citizen that takes,” Wagar said. “This is a neighborhood for us. We have facilities around here. This is exactly the kind of thing the health care community needs to be investing in.”

Wagar will get no argument from Carol Lee Thorpe, executive director of the home for pregnant teen-agers.

“People of influence need to be aware of what teen-agers are dealing with,” said Thorpe, watching some of her girls help paint a mural at the new center. “Not only do we get our facility cleaned up, but people come away with a lot clearer picture of what our community is all about.”