Candlelight Vigils Join 2 Communities for a Flicker of Time

At the intersection of Hubbard Street and Foothill Boulevard in Sylmar, there’s a Mobil station, a Shell station, a Jack in the Box and a Subway sandwich shop anchoring a dull mini-mall.

Several miles southeast in Sherman Oaks, where Van Nuys and Ventura boulevards cross, there is a Union 76 station and a shop selling pizza by the slice, but any resemblance to Sylmar ends there.

At one corner of Van Nuys and Ventura, a chic neon sign announces a jazz club, and a wide awning shelters readers browsing through newspapers from around the world. Across the way stands a glass-sheathed office building.

The jaded and unimaginative don’t usually look for connections between these two disparate worlds.

But one recent night, members of the National Organization for Women linked them with candlelight.

It was part of NOW’s “unity” campaign, inspired by the dissension that grew out of the O.J. Simpson trial. A local chapter planned to hold its monthly candlelight vigil at the Sherman Oaks intersection to appeal for help in the cause of Margaret Ovuoba, who says her five children were spirited away by her ex-husband to his native Nigeria.

Then a second vigil was thrown in at the last minute, the result of a serendipitous encounter in a beauty shop.

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While having her hair done, one of NOW’s members saw a flier seeking information about the suspected abduction of Sandra Nevarez from a Sylmar laundry more than a year ago.

Although the crime has long faded from the news reports, Nevarez’s family is still dutifully posting notices, hoping to turn up hints, clues or witnesses.

“We felt even though we planned to do one at Ventura and Van Nuys, we really wanted to do one in Sylmar for Sandra Nevarez as well,” said San Fernando Valley NOW President Jean Morrison, a medical administrator who hopes to make a transition into paid organizing.

Rather than postpone either vigil, NOW ran them in tandem, starting at dusk in Sylmar.

It turned out to be something of a communal scream.

At 5:30, all four corners of the Sylmar intersection were lined with more than 100 friends, neighbors and relatives of Sandra Nevarez, including children from toddlers to teenagers.

They handed out fliers and waved banners at passing cars, urging drivers to call an information line.

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As darkness fell, candles were passed out. Shielded from a chilly breeze by clear plastic cups, they flickered eloquently. Morrison, dressed crisply in a magenta jacket and black slacks and wearing a jewel in one nostril, stood out amid all the bustle, alternately talking on a cellular phone and reaching out to any stranger whose attention she could get.

Repeating his tale to anyone who asked, Nevarez’s husband, Pete Nevarez, said he still has not given up. He even hoped the vigil might reach the suspected kidnapper.

“If she’s alive, tell us. If you killed her, tell us,” he said.

About 6 o’clock, Sandra Nevarez’s cousins, Raymond and Ruben Sierra, started a chant, “Someone must know / Where did Sandra go?”

Soon the chanting spread to all four corners. It continued for 15 minutes.

Shortly after 6:30, Morrison drove off, leading a caravan to Sherman Oaks, which proved a far tougher environment for the cause.

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When I caught up with them, Morrison and two other women stood on the corner with a man in a business suit.

He was Bob Hertzberg, a Steve Allen look-alike who was running for the 40th Assembly District seat.

Saying he was there in his role as an activist--not candidate--Hertzberg hugged anyone who would allow it and handed out leaflets pleading for help for Margaret Ovuoba, the Montrose woman whose children were abducted.

Eventually, the group grew to about 20. They unfurled a banner and lit their candles in front of the gas station.

Mercedeses and Lexuses paraded by. Few drivers paid attention.

Pedestrians walked briskly on their way to half a dozen nightspots or the glowing Tower Records store a block away. Almost all kept their eyes aimed straight ahead or down toward their feet.

People standing on the sidewalk with candles in their hands can be as unappealing as panhandlers, maybe even more so. You sense that if you stop and listen, you’ll go away feeling worse about life without even getting the emotional rush of doing a charitable deed.

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Likewise, the panhandler gets an immediate reward when his pitch succeeds. Those on a vigil may never know whom they have touched or if they touched anyone at all.

Hertzberg was the most aggressive recruiter. Stepping into the right-turn lane while bending to catch each driver’s eye with his most beseeching smile, he repeatedly thrust fliers toward closed windows.

A few opened, allowing him to put a piece of paper in just as the car accelerated around the corner.

The women hailed pedestrians. Their first catch was a young woman on a bicycle who seemed to have stopped to see what was going on.

She said she’d like to help but had homework to do and pedaled off.

Next, after pumping gas into a car with the license plate “HPNOTYZ,” an elegantly dressed woman walked over to ask for a flier, then drove away. Then, around 8 p.m., a breakthrough. A woman in Oshkosh coveralls over a T-shirt began crying as she talked to Morrison and two others.

“I’ll do anything I can to help,” she said.

One heart was touched.

Then the participants drifted away, one by one. The flickering vision that so briefly brought the two communities together dissolved into the night, like a trail of smoke leaving a spent wick.