County Dumps L.A. Deputies’ Gorman House

For 50-odd years, the sheriff’s deputy chosen to work at the isolated Gorman substation had what many considered to be a plum job.

But for the wives of those deputies, the call of the quiet, rural countryside amounted to something short of ideal: living in a house that was slowly deteriorating, and cleaning jail cells, answering telephones and performing other miscellaneous domestic tasks without pay.

By the time the Sheriff’s Department settled a $1.1-million lawsuit with a deputy and his wife last year for sexual discrimination and other federal labor law violations for the unpaid work, the house was no longer in use--and wives were no longer required to work at the substation.

Now the county is divesting itself of the off-white stucco house off the Golden State Freeway that had come to symbolize the dispute.

“I am so thrilled,” said Caryn Suhr, the woman who filed the suit and who lived in the house for two years while her husband, Deputy Mark Suhr, was stationed in Gorman. “I want to tell my husband so he knows there is some closure to this.”

To get rid of the house, the county has renegotiated its lease with C. Douglas Ralphs and Ronald Ralphs (of grocery store fame), who literally own the town of Gorman.

As part of the arrangement, the department will keep the adjacent sheriff’s substation, garage and jail building and surrender the house and some excess land. The department would pay $470 a month rent instead of $600.

In a report to the Board of Supervisors, county Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen wrote that the Sheriff’s Department “no longer requires the use of the residence . . . due to changes in personnel requirements.”

The board is expected to approve the new lease arrangement next month.

Caryn Suhr is not at all sentimental about the house, which she calls “substandard.”

“I didn’t get a chance to see the house before we moved up there, but I figured that it was county housing so it would be fine,” she said. “I was in for the shock of my life.”

The house, she said, was extremely cold during the winter due to poor insulation, had poor lighting, and run-down carpeting and floor tiling.

“It was substandard,” she said. “It was terrible to expect deputies and their families to live in those kind of conditions.”

The three deputies now assigned to the substation stay in their own housing.

And at least one Sheriff’s Department official thinks that arrangement is for the best.

“Personally,” he said of the house, “I don’t think it was attractive.”