Seeking Community : Deaf County Residents Look for Ways to Create Closer Ties

That squawking box can jabber at her all it wants.

When Lee Anne Zirbel has a craving for a cheeseburger and fries, she bypasses the intercom and giant menu at McDonald’s drive-through and pulls her car right up to the window instead.

The employees are usually a little surprised at her unorthodox ordering approach. But how else can she explain her invisible disability?

Zirbel is deaf, living silently in a world that caters to the hearing. She has learned to adapt, to speed through such obstacles as drive-through windows without being embarrassed to ask for help.

She’s hardly alone: there are at least 5,740 profoundly deaf people living in Ventura County, according to the most recent statistics available from the state. About 35,000 other county residents have mild to serious hearing problems.

In some ways, Ventura is a natural place for deaf people to settle. It’s peaceful, safe, family oriented and ripe with beauty. Moreover, it’s close to Los Angeles, home to the largest concentration of deaf people in the United States and known worldwide for the full range of services it provides for those who can’t hear.

But there is a flip side. As close as Los Angeles is, it’s not close enough for Ventura County residents to feel a part of that thriving deaf community. And because the local deaf population is scattered throughout a wide geographical area, it lacks the closeness that can ease the pain of living with a disability.

There are no organized deaf clubs, team sports or special schools in Ventura County. In general, services for the deaf aren’t readily available. Only one state-sponsored agency caters to their needs, the local chapter of the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness, known as GLAD, in downtown Ventura.

Though the Ventura County branch of GLAD is widely praised for what it offers, including counseling, advocacy, sign-language interpreters and support for the deaf, its staff has its hands full trying to provide the same services to the deaf in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties as well.

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Communication barriers often lead to serious problems. Advocates say deaf people are more than twice as likely as hearing people to have drug and alcohol dependencies, and yet their disability makes it difficult to get help from such traditional groups as Alcoholics Anonymous.

They also are more frequently victims of domestic violence, according to support groups, but reaching out via hotlines or 911 isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Ventura County’s deaf residents struggle on a daily basis against a set of obstacles and inconveniences that range from small--like coping with drive-throughs at fast-food restaurants--to major challenges.

For example, consider what it would be like to give birth without the benefit of being able to hear and understand a doctor’s instructions, to feel cut off from soothing voices and comforting reassurances that all is well.

Two weeks ago, Denise Sidansky, 37, a deaf resident of Thousand Oaks, had her third child, a healthy baby girl who is deaf.

Speaking through a California Relay Operator--the service that processes phone calls for the deaf into typed messages--she explained that her first two children were delivered by caesarean section, but that she wanted to try natural childbirth with the third.

The day before she went in for a scheduled induced labor, her husband Bob, 42, who is also deaf, called Kaiser-Permanente to arrange for a sign language interpreter to guide the couple through the labor. No interpreters were available.

“They said it was too late to get one,” Sidansky said. “It was too hard to find one, so I didn’t want to argue.”

Like other deaf Venturans, Sidansky is used to adapting to difficult situations. She’s a regular at Little League games, lip reading and translating the coach’s instructions for her two sons, who are also deaf. She and her husband moved to Thousand Oaks from Agoura to cut down on her children’s hourlong bus ride to Simi Valley, where deaf children in eastern Ventura County take classes at Simi Elementary School.

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But labor isn’t easy. For two full days, she tried to deliver the baby, unable to hear instructions from the medical staff. The nurses were wonderful, she said, but no one at the hospital knew sign language.

“I was able to understand by lip reading at times,” Sidansky said. “At times we would get stuck and then they would write it down.”

On the third day, she had a C-section. Looking back, she said an interpreter would have been helpful, but that she couldn’t envision tying up the services of an interpreter for such a long time.

“I really didn’t bother to follow up,” she said. “I don’t think it was a shortage of interpreters that was the problem, I think it was just that they didn’t know how to get one or how to reach one.”

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, physicians are responsible for providing interpreters for their patients. But deaf people said the hassle of arranging for interpreters usually falls to them.

“ADA says that the doctor should pay for the interpreter, but a lot of times they feel that the interpreters are very expensive and they are hesitant to do that,” said Rodney Nunn, 49, a Ventura resident who was born deaf.

Nunn, a job counselor for the deaf with the state Department of Rehabilitation in Oxnard, said he rarely exercises his right to an interpreter, which can cost up to $30 an hour for a minimum of two hours. Instead, he relies on pen and paper to explain to his doctor what he needs.

“I would just love to have a nurse and a doctor that sign,” Nunn said.

That’s a common refrain in conversations with deaf residents of Ventura County, with every profession imaginable swapped for the words “nurse” and “doctor.” On her wish list for the deaf community, Ginny Paja would substitute drug and alcohol counselors.

The 30-year-old, who is deaf, does what she can in her capacity as the chemical dependency counselor at GLAD. As she explains it, her hands whirling out signs to an interpreter, communication barriers, isolation and low self-esteem in the deaf can result in a frighteningly high percentage of alcohol and drug dependencies.

In the hearing population, she said, about 12% to 15% of people have addiction problems. But in the deaf community, she said, that number soars to 35%.

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Working with GLAD, Paja said, she has counseled more than 1,000 people. She usually carries a caseload of about 70. But she runs into the same obstacle over and over again: finding support groups that provide interpreters. Although Alcoholics Anonymous sponsors an average of 50 meetings a day in Ventura County, deaf people rarely participate.

“None of them are interpreted,” Paja said. “So a profoundly deaf person is not going to go to an AA meeting.”

Deaf people are often in deep denial about addiction problems, heightened by their inherent isolation, Paja said. Having a specific support group for the deaf would help enormously, she said. She hopes that by next year she can form a 12-step group for the deaf.

“I’m starting from scratch,” she said.

Paja has more goals, even more ambitions. She wants to organize a state convention for deaf youth, filling a void she has felt all her life.

“There is no youth leadership here at all,” she said.

She grew up in Oxnard and attended elementary and junior high schools in Ventura. Then, like all deaf high school students in Ventura County, she went on to Rio Mesa High School in Camarillo. There were only four deaf students in her class.

After junior year, she transferred to the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, graduating in 1984. Paja tried Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the country’s oldest college for the deaf, but decided to come back to Ventura County.

“I’m very close to my family,” she explained. “I was homesick.”

She finished her degree at CSUN, well-known for its programs for the deaf. Now she finds herself drawn back to the San Fernando Valley and to Los Angeles, where a larger network of deaf people provide more social opportunities.

“It’s very small here,” Paja said.

Her office mate at GLAD, Zirbel, agreed. At 26, she also finds more of her social life in the city to the south.

“The deaf community in L.A. is so rich,” Zirbel said. “Here the community is very scattered. That is why we have this void of leadership. It’s very isolated.”

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Like Paja, Zirbel is doing what she can to change that. In between full-time work as a GLAD counselor and taking courses toward her graduate degree in counseling, she is president of a local Optimist Club for the Deaf. It is the second deaf-oriented service club founded in the nation. Zirbel said meetings usually pull together about 30 people, three-quarters of them deaf, the rest hearing.

“In Los Angeles a lot more people would show up,” she explained.

That’s one of the drawbacks of having such a scattered deaf population. GLAD hosts many events, including picnics, ice-cream socials and parties, but they aren’t always well-attended. Residents who live in the eastern end of the county tend to head south for entertainment, depleting the pool of deaf people. It’s kind of a Catch-22 for GLAD outreach director Coleen Ashly; the events she plans will help bring the deaf community together, but she needs strong attendance to make that happen.

“The deaf community will go anywhere there is a community,” she said. “Deaf people really need a sense of community.”

In January the group began hosting movies for the deaf--with captions on the screen just like subtitles on foreign films--at The Esplanade Mall in Oxnard. Ashly said offering something as seemingly trivial as a first-run movie can make a vast difference in deaf people’s lives.

“What has traditionally happened all of their lives is that they miss what is new,” Ashly said. “They are always a little bit behind because of that lack of communication.”

The $5 movies are shown on the first Saturday of every month at the American Family Theater in the Esplanade. So far, GLAD has shown “Mr. Holland’s Opus”--a movie that featured a deaf boy and brought in a packed house--”Goldeneye,” “Jumanji,” “Dragonheart” and “Nixon”--”a total bomb,” Ashly said, shaking her head. The blockbusters start to roll in next month with “Twister,” followed by “Independence Day” in September and “Mission: Impossible” in October.

“It’s wonderful to bring movies for the deaf to Ventura County,” Ashly said. “People used to have to go all the way to Eagle Rock,” where a theater regularly shows captioned movies.

Ashly grew up the hearing child of two deaf parents.

“I didn’t feel different, but society made me feel different,” she said. “At church, at school, in restaurants, I was always that poor kid with the deaf parents.”

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Being the link between her parents and the outside world prepared her for the job she has today as an advocate for the deaf.

“It’s who I am,” she said. “From the age of 5 on I was the communicator. I was the advocate. My parents never had job opportunities. I grew up living this and breathing it. As a hearing person, I can see both sides of the coin.”

When she was a child, it was pointless for her mother to go to school to see Ashly perform in plays or recitals. Few groups bothered with interpreters. Since then, things have improved considerably, she said, with places like Magic Mountain, Universal Studios and Hearst Castle offering tours and special events for the deaf.

“We get to access so much more now,” Ashly said.

Deaf residents credit the ADA with bringing about much of the change. Because of the act, soon all new television sets with over 13-inch screens will come equipped with a decoder chip for closed caption viewing. Before ADA, deaf people had to buy a special machine along with their television to decode the captions.

Participating in politics is easier as well, at least in theory. Thanks to ADA, if a deaf person wants to speak at a City Council meeting, the city must provide an interpreter. At first, GLAD worked as an advocate to explain the law to city clerks. Now cities understand their responsibilities and GLAD works mostly to connect them with interpreters.

“Cities in Ventura County are very hip to this now,” Ashly said.

Local law enforcement is also making great strides in meeting the needs of the deaf, she said. After a recent series of disasters, all counties in California are under orders from the Department of Justice to upgrade 911 services and make them more accessible to the deaf.

A number of complaints were filed against 911 in other parts of the state after deaf people were disconnected from the service and left to fend for themselves. One woman died as a result, setting off a federal investigation.

A local forum to discuss ways to improve the system is planned for October. For starters, Ashly said, all city police stations will be equipped with TDDs (Telephone Devices for the Deaf), instead of having calls funneled through a translator.

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Finally, Ventura County is far, far ahead on at least one issue facing the deaf community. In September, workers will begin making call boxes on local freeways accessible to the deaf.

“Ventura County will be the first in the nation to have these boxes,” said Chris Stephens, project manager with the Ventura County Transportation Commission.

The U.S. government is developing guidelines for all call boxes to be equipped for the deaf as part of the federal disabilities act. But the transportation commission decided to push ahead without waiting.

“Our commission said, we’ve got some funding available, let’s make these call boxes accessible,” Stephens said.

For $300,000, every call box in the county will be fitted with the devices, designed to fit right into the already existing boxes. On the outside, the international symbol for the TDDs--a telephone attached to a keyboard--will let deaf motorists know that help is just a keystroke away.