His Job Is to Get Club Fiscally Fit

It is 4 p.m. at the Placentia Boys and Girls Club, a windowless building on a street lined with warehouses that is second home to hundreds of impoverished kids. And as teenagers rush in after school, Ruben Alvarez sits in a back room, worrying.

Just chosen to replace Albert P. Rizzo, the organization’s ousted director awaiting trial on charges of taking donations to the club in exchange for relieving people of their court-ordered community service, Alvarez is the man entrusted with bringing the nonprofit community center back from the edge of ruin.

“I’ve been writing grants like crazy; my first weeks here are just spent with my hand out, looking for money,” Alvarez said, moments after appealing to the Placentia Rotary Club for help at a Wednesday breakfast. “This club is hurt, no doubt about it, it’s wounded. You know though, we’ll get it working again.”

But with faith in the organization shaken by the charges against Rizzo and with deep financial trouble threatening its survival, the job won’t be easy.

For 35 years a haven for young people with no place else to play and a force in combating the influence of teenage gangs in Placentia, the club is down to its last $6,000 in the bank. Just a year after an Orange County charity pumped $250,000 into its renovation, choosing it over dozens of competing organizations, the club is looked on with suspicion by givers and is fighting to win back respect in its own city.

“They’ve got their work cut out for them to get back their place in the community again, to start fund-raising, but they’ve got some good people, some good volunteers in the community,” said Jim Soto, Placentia director of recreation and human services.

To make matters worse, support for the club from the United Way, long its largest single contributor, has dropped 50% in the past six years, the result of heavy competition from other nonprofits. Of its fiscal 1997 operating budget of $175,000, just $19,000 came from the United Way. And in Placentia, a low-income community where it is hard to raise money in the best of times, the club was struggling even before Rizzo was arrested.

Rizzo, 52, is accused of accepting $450 in donations from undercover police officers in exchange for the falsified work sheets. The covert probe was launched after an informant told a probation officer that hours could be bought at the club, police said.

Rizzo was released on his own recognizance after pleading not guilty at his arraignment Jan. 22. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for March 28.

“To get to the bottom line, we’re in trouble,” club board member Bob Dickinson told the Rotary Club last Wednesday. While Placentia community leaders have greeted the club’s appeals with sympathy and in some cases promised help, donations from them have yet to appear.

But with the new director in place, the club may be headed out of the worst of its troubles. In the past week, Alvarez has applied for funds for the club from United Way, Placentia and the club’s national arm, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which does not normally fund individual clubs.

Board members have been meeting once a week since the Rizzo situation broke. They are planning a benefit golf tournament at a local country club and seeking sponsors among local businesses. They are also looking for volunteers to run the club’s vacant arts-and-crafts and computer rooms--outfitted as part of last year’s renovation but closed off until supervisors are found.

One day last week, a local community activist walked into the club and promised to repaint its faded gymnasium. The next day, three former donors to the club who read about its troubles in The Times called the newspaper to find out how they can help.

Alvarez has given a local basketball league access to the club’s underused gymnasium if the league signed up its players as members in the club, at $10 each a year. The deal not only bagged the club an extra $200, it brought 20 new teens through its doors.

“It’s unfortunate what happened, but we’re willing to work with them, to do whatever we can to help,” the recreation department’s Soto said.

Ironically, it is the club’s longtime financial difficulties that appear to have gotten Rizzo into trouble in the first place, said Placentia community leaders, club board members and friends of the former director.

Though other Boys and Girls Clubs in Southern California offer multiple clubhouses, computer labs, learning centers, team sports and drama and music programs, the Placentia club has never been much more than some pool and pingpong tables, a gymnasium and a boxing ring.

And though other clubs long ago began inviting girls to join, making for a nationwide average membership that is now 38% girls, the Placentia club was boys-only until 1996. Today, less than 6% of its members are girls, and the club has no female staff member and no special programs or facilities for them.

“It’s sad; there were several things that were moving forward for them, and this takes a step back, I think,” said David Sykes, senior regional service director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

Pressure to continue that momentum may have affected Rizzo, friends said.

“That club has always struggled, and it’s gotten worse since the United Way money slowed down,” said James Marshall, a Placentia businessman and friend of Rizzo.

Marshall and other friends of Rizzo at the Rotary Club, where he was president and a member for more than two decades until he resigned after the charges were filed, said they have mixed feelings about the allegations. Many blamed the court system for mandating community service hours at organizations they say need donations more than helpers.

“If instead of sitting around with nothing to do, they give $500 to the Boys Club, well then, I guess the community came out ahead,” said a friend of Rizzo’s who asked not to be identified.

The Orange County Probation Department says its probe of the club continues. But department spokesman Rod Speer said no evidence has surfaced that Rizzo pocketed any of the money. Rizzo could not be reached for comment.

At the club one day last week, about a dozen boys were lifting weights and playing pool. A lone boxer practiced in the club’s ring.

“I like coming, getting in shape,” said Darwin Mejilla, 18, who came to Placentia from Culiacan, Mexico, five years ago. “I guess if I didn’t have the club, I could get into some bad stuff.”

In a room nearby, Alvarez was writing another grant proposal.

“I feel for the kids more than anything,” Alvarez said. “But I know what I face, and to tell you the truth, anything in this world can be fixed.”