Making L.A. Better : Acts of Caring Bloom Across Landscape

It happens every weekend but often goes unnoticed. People who still care enough about their city or their cause give up their day off and join with others because they want to make a difference. It can be something as close to home as cleaning up the back alley or painting the neighborhood elementary school. Or it can be as grand-sounding as trying to end world hunger or protecting the environment. On Saturday, thousands were out there. Here are samples of what they did.

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The day started with hope.

And heaping plates of hot cakes, ham and sausage and scrambled eggs for the 200 men who filled the basement of the Brookins Community African Methodist Episcopal Church in Southwest Los Angeles.

The Men of Brookins--the MOB, as they call themselves--were having their first-ever prayer breakfast. “Until now,” explained breakfast organizer Bob Adams, “the ladies have been more active.”

No more. With a nod to the “Million Man March,” the men vowed to become more of a presence in their community. More visible and more active, as aerospace technician Henry Thomas put it.

“We can turn a lot of kids around,” said Ernest Tittle, an appraiser.

“We want young people to know they can come talk to an older guy when they’re in trouble,” said Christopher Horton, a mail handler. That way, they can turn to the MOB, not to gangs.

One Less Eyesore

The median strip just west of the Shakespeare Bridge in the Franklin Hills area of Los Feliz has always been ugly. An asphalt-smothered, weed-speckled slope, it seemed all the more hideous in contrast to the 1926 bridge, which with its Gothic turrets and arches remains one of the city’s most whimsical spans.

But the Franklin Avenue median is an eyesore no longer, thanks to the tenacious efforts and generosity of a neighborhood that decided to transform one tiny, irritating slice of the urban landscape into something pleasing.

Armida Bolton looked on in the bright morning sunlight as several dozen people dug into the dry clay, making space for an assortment of California native plants. She and her late husband, Donald, had “walked past here hundreds of times,” she said, explaining why, in his memory, she and her mother-in-law had donated thousands of dollars to help pay for landscaping the strip.

For others the project was perhaps less personal, but no less rewarding. “I think it’s important in a city this size to have citizens actually do something themselves and accomplish it,” said Suzette Trigger as she paused from her shoveling. “I’m really hoping to see more of this kind of thing.”

Helping Hands for the Ill

Sometimes, the illness strikes so deep that the children miss school for weeks at a time. Some never return. The ones who do depend on people like Robin Thorne and Sinuri Akib.

They are two of the volunteers who tutor 10 youngsters with sickle cell anemia every weekend. Parents find a way to get their children to the offices of the Sickle Cell Disease Research Foundation in the Crenshaw district. Then Thorne, Akib and others find a way to help them learn. They cover math, reading--whatever the children, most of whom are middle school students, have been missing.

“One of those kids just graduated from junior high. No one thought he was going to make it,” said Akib, a 38-year-old environmental chemist from Lagos, Nigeria, who lives in Los Angeles. “You can’t ask for more gratification than that.”

Thorne, who has overseen the program for the past year, learned about it from a friend at her church, Agape Center for Spiritual Truth, which sends volunteers every Saturday into the community.

“I come in here and I see those faces, and I say, ‘Yes. This is where I need to be,’ ” said Thorne, 37, who is pursuing a psychology degree. “There really isn’t an obligation. There’s a desire.”

A Skid Row Legacy

Tears of thankfulness were on the faces of some of the 700 homeless people receiving blankets and personal hygiene items outside a Downtown Los Angeles office building.

But tears of another kind came from Richard Nickelson of Manhattan Beach. He was at the head of the line, explaining what had brought 80 volunteers to the edge of Skid Row.

They were there in memory of his son Kenny. For six years before being murdered in 1988 at age 23, the young man had quietly brought blankets to street people.

The 52-year-old aerospace business manager learned of his son’s generosity only after discovering cash that his son had saved to buy 100 blankets. So, his family decided to stand in for him.

“I couldn’t believe what we saw--a little girl come out of a cardboard box with no shoes and no coat,” he recalled. That moment, the Kenny Nickelson Memorial Foundation was born.

“I’ll be coming back until I die,” Nickelson vowed.

Beauty Replaces Blight

For years, the building at Chandler Boulevard and Denny Avenue has been plagued by graffiti, one of many properties in the quasi-industrial North Hollywood neighborhood claimed by taggers.

But a rain forest mural dubbed “A Corner of Paradise” took root there thanks to about a dozen teen-agers, donated paint and the foresight of Gloria Gold.

“The owners . . . were tired of having to constantly repaint in order to combat graffiti, and it’s been proven that the taggers leave artwork alone,” said Gold, who runs the Encino-based nonprofit Halcyon Center, a counseling and educational program for teen-agers.

Gold, the building’s owners and her award-winning muralist friend, Tim Fields, settled on a “big, decorative motif” because the property houses an interior decorator and a couple of furniture makers.

Even before “Paradise” was finished, neighbors were gushing and the owner of a building across the street asked for a mural of his own.

A World of Difference

Ginny Corzine tried to take a step toward saving the world.

The 67-year-old retired real estate agent from Hacienda Heights spent a few hours seated behind a table in a Whittier College auditorium, registering participants in a United Nations Assn. conclave and handing out literature.

The group observed the U.N.’s 50th anniversary with a series of speeches by a political science professor, Whittier Mayor Michael Sullens and Rep. Esteban Torres (D-Pico Rivera).

“The only way we’ll ever have peace is to negotiate, talk through things,” Corzine said. “It’d be easy to stay home, sleep in. This is too important.”

But outside the auditorium, four members of the John Birch Society lofted placards and banners with a different message: “Stop All Foreign Aid.”

“Ignorance is what we’re against,” said Walter Scott, a 71-year-old retired office manager who wore red suspenders and a red, white and blue hat with an American flag stuck in the top. “I’m well-informed.”

Brotherly Bonds

Most of their meetings are kept under wraps, just so they don’t offend the uninvited.

But the Eastside Boys, a loose cluster of boyhood friends from South-Central Los Angeles, stepped into the spotlight with a fund-raiser.

In the 60 years since their bond was forged, their ranks have swelled to about 3,500 people across four generations. Every family reunion-style meeting turns into “a big love-in,” said Halvor Miller, 63.

Proceeds from Saturday night’s gala will go to Project Peace Makers, the Crenshaw Family YMCA and Demo’s Pop Warner football program.

Secret of Sounding Off

It may have sounded like the 175 teen-agers who spent the day at USC were debating things such as human rights and the environment. But they were really learning a lesson in adult-style communication.

For weeks the youths had argued their positions anonymously on the Internet--keeping the identity of their 13 schools secret and using names such as India and Brazil instead of their own. And there were some surprises when the teens finally met face to face.

It turned out that International Negotiation Project organizer Joyce Kaufman of Whittier had linked schools from some of the Southland’s richest communities--and the poorest.

No matter. The lessons learned were the same for all: “Patience,” said 17-year-old Melissa McKenna of Long Beach’s Wilson High. “You have to listen,” said LaTrease Jones, 16, of Centennial High in Compton.

And this: “Communication is clearer in person--you can interact faster than on the computer,” said Jed Kroncke, 17, of the private Cate School in Carpinteria.

“They are there learning you can’t always get what you want,” Kaufman said. And things aren’t always like they first look.

A Voice for Veterans

Yes, David said, he thought he and the other veterans waving signs at the cars whizzing by the Westwood Federal Building would have an impact. “I think it brings awareness, I really do,” said David, who, having recently escaped a life of homelessness and addiction, felt that he “needed to be of service.”

The couple dozen demonstrators were protesting cuts in veterans services and reiterating their desire to keep the commercially attractive Veterans Affairs facilities in Westwood in government hands.

It was, he said, an honor to speak up for other ex-soldiers on Veterans Day. And it was a sign of his own resurrection. Not too long ago, he added, “You would have walked right by. I wasn’t in any condition at that time--I couldn’t have spoken on anything.”

Reliving the Past

Five years ago, when Anna Salazar started volunteering with a Van Nuys-based nonprofit group called Friends of the Family, she felt guilty about being less of a mother by leaving her three children behind.

But “it was something I needed to do for me,” said Salazar, 34, of San Fernando. An unwed mother at 15, Salazar drew on her experiences to counsel other young girls in the same situation. On Saturday, she helped organize a luncheon for girls she hed worked with.

Chenzira Grant, 22, recalled how she had come to Salazar after her own mother kicked her out of the house four years ago in her last trimester of pregnancy. “If I could have traded my mother in at one point, it would have been [for] her,” she said of Salazar.

Salazar, who started working full time for the group about a year ago, remembers when she was a volunteer while raising children and attending night school. The work has offered a way to deal with her own feelings about her past. “I was so busy raising kids, I didn’t deal with things. Like disappointing your parents, and feeling guilty about it and never talking about it,” she said.

As she served salad and cherry pie, she said she found that she could do some good “even if I didn’t have a perfect life.”

Oil Together Now

The day was a slick, 30-weight success in the Crenshaw district.

Residents emptied their garages and carports of jugs of used motor oil and lined up for the community’s first oil recycling effort.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” said George Hall, hoisting a water bottle loaded with old oil from the back of his 12-year-old Toyota.

“There’s a lot here. I change it every 3,000 miles and use five quarts, so you can figure it out. I don’t want to dump it and have it seep into the water table.”

The daylong pickup was part of an American Oceans Campaign to prevent city residents from dumping used oil in gutters, which empty into the Pacific. Officials estimate that 8 million gallons are illegally dumped in Los Angeles yearly. The Crenshaw Boulevard collection was the first of a series of citywide pickups.

Johanne Sandilands hopes that the recycling drive makes one of her neighbors shift gears. She brought in a container of his used oil.

“He usually just dumps it in the garbage,” she said. “He shouldn’t do that.”

Symphony of Kindness

Daniel Barnum, a videographer, and Vick Djeredjian, owner of a video store, organized a spectacle in Santa Clarita to help a stranger.

Barnum, 43, had leaned on some Hollywood connections to provide Beethoven and Beethoven Jr., two movie stars who happen to be St. Bernards. The idea was to raise funds for the family of Jake Schonert, a 33-year-old Santa Clarita paramedic who was sent to the scene of an accident in which his wife, Patricia, died Oct. 17. He was waved off the call just before he arrived.

The line of parents with kids wanting to contribute money and have their pictures taken with the dogs was a block long well before 2 p.m., when the pooches were supposed to arrive.

“A year ago, I lost someone, a friend, to a drunk driver,” Barnum explained. He had read about Schonert’s wife’s accident in the paper. “It was something that really touched me . . . and I have a little free time,” he said.

Schonert turned up after learning about the event in a flyer. He said his family has received tremendous support: School and church friends have provided meals. Fellow paramedics have volunteered to cover his shifts until February.

And now this, strangers organizing a fund-raiser to help him and his four children. “It’s hard, but we are coping,” he said. “All this makes a tremendous difference.”

This story was written by staff writers Bob Pool, Bettina Boxall, Jeff Leeds, Leslie Berger and Jill Leovy.