Comfort in Crisis

When the police, the firefighters, the paramedics, the coroner have left, they stay on. Their job: to provide emotional first aid to families in the first few hours after a tragedy.

They are TIP (Trauma Intervention Programs) volunteers.

They were there in December after five siblings, all 10 or younger, perished in a fire that engulfed a garage in Watts where they were sleeping.

They were there earlier this month for Manuel Barrera, manager of a Koreatown apartment building, who had returned home to find the bodies of his wife, their son and his wife’s brother gagged, bound and stabbed.

Karen Krauthamer recalls sitting with Barrera for hours, “just talking, until he could get some friends around him. We talked about things that aren’t fair--he moved from Guatemala to bring his family to a place that’s safe--and about religion, family, children.”

The next morning, she was in another part of the city, comforting a young man whose father had just hanged himself from a tree.

“It was about money,” Krauthamer says. “He couldn’t support his family, so he went out and gambled and lost more.”

Krauthamer, 37, a self-employed CPR instructor, signed on as a volunteer when TIP’s L.A. pilot program began in July. In November, she became crisis manager, heading a team of 30 volunteers that includes a golf magazine publisher, a grocery clerk and a massage therapist.

On a recent midday, Krauthamer and volunteer Lee Goldsmith answered paramedics’ call for a volunteer at a small apartment building east of downtown. A 42-year-old woman had been found dead in a front unit.

While police talked with other family members, Goldsmith comforted the dead woman’s brother-in-law, who was frustrated, angry and a bit drunk. “Do you feel like screaming or punching something?” Goldsmith asked, placing a hand gently on his shoulder, telling him it was OK to rant, to cry.

The circumstances were bizarre, but Goldsmith, unruffled, was not there to judge. And, as a TIP volunteer, he has learned that “the uncommon is common.” This woman had been dead for weeks in her locked apartment and, although her sister and brother-in-law lived in the same building--and hadn’t seen her for a month--they hadn’t become alarmed until it was impossible to ignore the stench.

The extended family was gathering. There would be small children coming home from school who’d have to be told of their aunt’s death. There was the dead woman’s son in jail to be notified.

As the television droned in the sister’s apartment, and a parakeet named Margaret chirped, the long wait for the coroner began. Choosing his moment carefully, Goldsmith broached the matter of funeral arrangements, of decisions to be made such as burial or cremation.

He was to stay with the family for four hours. By the time he left, this stranger had become both friend and counselor. Hugs were exchanged all around.

Typically, a TIP call begins when a paramedic, having determined that a volunteer would be welcome, radios a 911 dispatcher, who, in turn, calls the TIP team leader on duty, who pages a volunteer.

Once there--ideally, within 20 minutes--the volunteer might make a special request on a family’s behalf, such as asking the coroner for a lock of a dead child’s hair, arrange for cleanup at a murder scene or explain the nitty-gritty of dealing with death. Says Krauthamer: “There’s a charge of $187 for the coroner. Six weeks later, they’re going to get a bill. They should know that.”

They come with telephone numbers for support groups, bereavement groups, rape hotlines, self-help groups, Meals on Wheels, a Spanish-language hotline.

It’s burnout work--the average volunteer stays three years--but even the grimmest jobs have ludicrous moments. Once, an 85-year-old woman whose husband had just died had only one request of Krauthamer: to sit with her and read the National Enquirer.

During their intensive 50-hour training, volunteers are taught what to say (“This must be very difficult for you”) and what not to say (“God has his reasons”). Says Krauthamer: “You’re very honest. You don’t soften the blow.” In the case of a suicide, “You don’t say, ‘It was probably an accident,’ but rather, ‘Do you think he was in a lot of pain?’ ”

Experiences such as the following, shared in class, are also part of the training: Jeanne Koth, bookkeeper at a Westside market, had been summoned at 2:30 a.m. to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, where a runaway teen had been brought after fainting. After Koth talked with her for an hour, the girl decided to go home.

Three volunteers had been called to an apartment building where an armed man had barricaded himself inside and set the building on fire after threatening, then releasing, his girlfriend. Once police had things under control, volunteers helped find someone to board up the building and arranged for a hotel voucher, food and diapers for the woman and the couple’s two children.

Another volunteer had encountered a murder-suicide. A man had killed his girlfriend, six months’ pregnant, before shooting himself. The woman’s 5-year-old daughter had found the bodies upon waking.

*

TIP, a network of 15 chapters and 500 volunteers serving 75 communities from Florida to Oregon, was started in 1985 in Oceanside by Wayne Fortin, a marriage and family counselor who had worked with police and firefighters on crisis intervention and stress management. In 1985, it incorporated as a nonprofit organization.

There has been some resistance to the program, he acknowledges, such as “agencies just plain not getting it--’What do we want citizens running around doing this stuff for?’ ”

Some surmise that only voyeurs and ambulance chasers would put themselves in these high-stress situations. Not so, Fortin says: “We screen out the ghouls. And there are easier ways to be a ghoul.”

About 25 in 40 complete training and commit to being on call for three 12-hour shifts each month, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays or weekends. Some are retirees, but most juggle TIP and full-time jobs.

Training includes a session on “street smarts,” but volunteers are not expected to put themselves in danger. Though TIP has liability insurance, Fortin says that “the closest call was a lady, an Alzheimer’s victim, who picked up a lamp and tried to hit the volunteer over the head.” The pilot program had start-up money from national TIP and is now staying afloat on an infusion of $15,000 from a private donor while seeking ongoing funding.

Among its biggest boosters is Alan R. Cowen, deputy chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department and commander of its human resources bureau. At the scene of a crisis, he says, “All too often we leave and tend to feel some things are left undone. TIP volunteers sort of dive into the pit while everyone else is hovering around not knowing what to say, what to do. They relieve Fire Department personnel so we don’t have to remain on scene.”

Initially, Cowen had some concerns. “People who are involved in an emergency are very vulnerable to predators. To have a stranger come into your home. It doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar to realize there are potential dangers. But so far, there haven’t been any problems. The screening process is very good.”

Once a day on average, the Fire Department--TIP’s primary user --calls for a volunteer. Although the department provides space for volunteer training, it has no money to fund TIP, nor does the Los Angles Police Department, which also uses TIP volunteers.

Capt. Gary J. Brennan, area commanding officer of the Southwest Community Police Station, says TIP “has the potential to be very valuable” to the LAPD. Southwest is recruiting volunteers from the community for TIP training.

Los Angeles is TIP’s most ambitious project. “Our big urban experiment,” Fortin says. For now, TIP serves only fire battalions 5 and 18--which include Hollywood, Los Feliz, Mid-Wilshire, the Westside and Culver City--and LAPD’s Wilshire, Southwest and Hollywood divisions.

Krauthamer, who’s also principal fund-raiser, is dedicated to saving and expanding TIP, and to quadrupling the number of volunteers by year’s end. (Those interested may call TIP at [213] 307-5498.) Her goal is to cover the county, which Fortin estimates will cost $60,000 a year per 500,000 population served.

*

Many volunteers were, like Goldsmith, themselves helped by a good Samaritan. In 1992, he was severely injured when a car struck his bicycle. When he came out of a coma, he learned that passersby had stopped to care for him.

It was a life-changing experience, leading him to leave his corporate job. Now 39, he’s studying to be a licensed counselor, working with families of people struggling with trauma.

He says of TIP: “I feel good about what I do. The hardest part is you meet someone at a vulnerable time and there’s nothing long-term. We can’t solve their problems.”

Rochelle Skala had never heard of TIP until her husband’s sister, Suzanna Inesta, 48, died of peritonitis in late September.

Finding minors alone at the scene--Inesta’s sons, 15 and 11, had discovered their mother dead in bed and called 911--paramedics called for a TIP volunteer. Krauthamer responded.

“She was there when I arrived,” Skala recalls, “taking care of the kids and organizing things and helping family members, who were just floating around in space.”

The children were now orphans, having lost their father a year earlier. Says Skala: “Karen was the first adult who showed up to mother them. She just jumped in with caring. They had serious questions--’Who are all these people?’ ‘Where are they taking my mother?’--and she answered them.”

Meanwhile, Skala recalls, Krauthamer was keeping Fairfax area neighbors at bay. Later, she distracted the boys as their mother’s body was removed.

“These things don’t happen every day to people and most people don’t know what to do,” says Skala’s husband, Thomas. “To have someone who’s calm and experienced and helpful there is terrific.”

But most volunteers know they’ll likely be remembered only as “this nice person the Fire Department called to come out and be with me.” And that’s OK.

“It’s so rewarding,” Krauthamer says, “if you know where to look for the rewards. Maybe it’s a child who just won’t let go of your hand.”