Thirst for Justice

Jose Gonzales licked his lips on this cloudless Sunday morning as he described his family’s sun-parched existence, how they often went days without water in a Godforsaken corner of the high desert where it forgets to rain.

“You feel the thirst in your bones,” the 46-year-old house painter said. His family lived for four years without utilities or running water on land sold to him by developer Marshall Redman.

As recently as last week, the family had no water to drink, wash clothes or go to the toilet. “I had to send my children off into the desert,” Gonzales said. “I can still hear the little ones crying when they lost their way in the darkness.”

But on Sunday, Gonzales and others allegedly victimized by the 67-year-old millionaire developer learned that their thirst may finally be slaked. A team of Los Angeles County relief workers met with residents outside a small church after Mass and told them they would be allowed to purchase keys to one of four county-owned wells near their makeshift homes.

The relief teams also informed the mostly poor, Latino families that they may qualify for housing assistance and legal aid. To the long-suffering men and women of this high desert community, it was the answer to a prayer.

“It makes me feel good,” Gonzales said Sunday. “It makes me feel thirsty.”

Gonzales and his neighbors are a disparate community of hearty survivors who have stubbornly made do without life’s basic amenities in this place of desolate beauty 90 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. For years, they say, they waited for schools and churches and electricity to finally be brought to them, as the developer and his salesmen assured them they would.

And they waited for the water, especially the water.

Redman has been charged with seven felony counts in connection with an alleged land fraud scheme spanning three Southern California counties. Over more than 16 years, the developer’s three companies sold land to 2,500 Spanish-speaking buyers, authorities say, making promises he did not keep.

Following disclosures of Redman’s sales in The Times, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in June convened two special task forces to explore ways to prevent future land fraud and bring immediate help to victims.

Authorities estimate that in north Los Angeles County alone, more than 50 families have been denied access to county wells because water authorities said the families could not prove they owned the land they lived on.

Last week, several county assessment teams fanned out across the scrub- and Joshua tree-covered landscape half an hour’s drive northeast of Palmdale.

*

On Sunday, county officials met with scores of Latino families outside Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission, which sits on a dirt road angling toward the horizon. As children danced and played under a steamy desert sun, their parents lined up to hear how the government could help them.

Upon receiving the good news, the men and women celebrated in different ways. One husband squeezed his wife’s hand, and a mother laughed with friends as she fanned her infant with a piece of cardboard.

Dan Jones, a regional superintendent for the Los Angeles County Waterworks Region, said he was relieved that the county had decided to offer water to Redman’s alleged victims until the families can figure out whether they want to remain on their properties or seek refunds.

“In the past, we turned some of these very people away when they came to us asking for water,” he said. “We didn’t like it any more than they did. We were just trying to live by the rules we had in front of us.”

Some families pressed for more help than the county was prepared to give. They said they need electricity, and, one day perhaps, a bus line to serve the isolated area.

But most families expressed thanks that now--without shame or having to steal under cover of night--they can get water when they need it.

“In the past, we had to borrow a key from our neighbors who had one,” said 13-year-old Felix Valenzuela, whose parents and four siblings have lived for six years on land they bought from Redman. “But many people were afraid to lend their keys. Because if the county caught them, they themselves lost their water rights. We had to go at night. It was a bad situation.”

Many families resorted to begging for water from local ranchers. Others took water from nearby fire hydrants until county officials, citing $19,000 in missing water, shut off the hydrants last year.

Said Felix: “My dad always told me that while it was wrong to take things that didn’t belong to us, we had to do what it took to survive.”

Maria Alvarez said that things got so bad, she was forced to give her children water from a portable toilet. “My kids were thirsty, what else could I do?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I felt terrible because water is one of those things we take for granted. I could tell my kids there was no money for toys. But how do you tell them there was no money for water?”

As a last resort, Alvarez said, she borrowed money to have water delivered. Or her husband trucked some from Los Angeles when he returned home each weekend from his job as a truck driver.

Now, they say, their water worries are over.

Jose Gonzales says he sometimes spent $20 a day providing water for his nine children. Now all he will have to pay is $45.60 for six months.

And while he is thankful, Gonzales says, he does not thank Marshall Redman.

“My family has suffered here,” said the slightly built man, wearing a cap bearing the name of his hometown of Topio, in the Mexican state of Durango. “Marshall Redman didn’t treat us like human beings. He treated us like animals.

“How could he do that?”