PALS Needs a Few Friends

Sergio Rivera, 16, and his 13-year-old brother, Ricardo, say they found self-discipline and safety in a kick-boxing class at a youth center affiliated with the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division.

But their class, and others serving 1,200 youths up to age 17, might come to an end as early as November as the center and its sponsor scramble to raise enough funds to remain open, officials said.

“It’s important to me that it stays open,” Sergio said. “It keeps me out of trouble. I can come here and relax. No danger in here.”

The center opened three years ago this week with a one-time, three-year, $120,000 grant from the Los Angeles-based Audrey & Sidney Irmas Foundation. The center is down to its last $6,000, excluding a $20,000 scholarship fund, said Richard “Rocko” Friedkin, vice president for the West Valley Police Activity League Supporters, a booster group that oversees fund-raising for the center.

“We may have to borrow from the scholarship fund to make the rent in the next month or so, and we don’t want to have to do that,” he said.

Robert Irmas, trustee and administrator of the family foundation that bears his parents’ name, said he was spurred to help West Valley PALS after seeing it at work in Operation Sparkle, a cleanup and graffiti-removal program at Balboa Park.

“We kept them afloat for the first three years,” Irmas said, adding that the foundation’s rules prevent it from being the sole source of revenue for any organization.

“It was their responsibility to think down the road three years to replace us as a funding source,” Irmas said. “They are a very meaningful and worthwhile program, but they are competing with other meaningful, worthwhile programs.”

Friedkin acknowledged that his group could have done a better job, citing missed grant application deadlines and a decision not to hire a professional fund-raiser.

He said West Valley PALS is constantly raising funds, but the amounts collected fall far short of what is needed.

“Every few weeks we try to get into some event that will raise us some money,” said Friedkin, a local business owner who volunteers his time.

Those efforts have included golf and pool tournaments; booths at the Van Nuys Airport Aviation Expo and chamber of commerce events; and department-store promotional shopping days.

The center’s annual operating expenses total about $85,000, Friedkin said, covering the salary for the lone paid staffer, director Neely Suter, as well as $3,000 monthly rent, utilities, upkeep and miscellaneous costs such as plumbing and computer maintenance.

Activities are free at the storefront center at 7033 Reseda Blvd., one of two PALS centers in the Valley. The other, at 9150 Sepulveda Blvd. in North Hills, serves about 300 children within the LAPD’s Devonshire Division and has been open since 1994.

Each youth center is self-supporting through fund-raisers and grants received under the auspices of a PALS organization, Friedkin said.

Police and community leaders say the West Valley needs the youth center because there is no other area facility like it. Young people go there for wrestling, boxing, video games, field trips, tutoring and computer training.

Councilwomen Laura Chick and Cindy Miscikowski have both assisted the center. Over the last two years, Miscikowski has donated a total of $1,500 from her constituent-services fund.

“It comes down to how we can stretch the money to all the worthwhile organizations,” said Glenn Barr, a spokesman for Miscikowski. “They’re a good group. We’d like to keep them around.”

Chick donated $12,400 to the computer lab in city funds. She said her office is working to keep the center open.

“It would be a great loss to the community,” she said. “It would be a hole in the types of services that they are providing to young people in our community who don’t have other places to go. I don’t want to contemplate that loss and hope that we can assist them to get the funding that they need.”

Chick’s office has arranged several workshops to help the West Valley center and other nonprofits learn to write “knock-your-socks-off” grants--”something they need to learn,” she said.

The LAPD currently shares space with the center while department facilities at the West Valley Municipal Building undergo renovation. Ten officers use the storefront as a field office, while bicycle patrol officers often drop in for a cold drink and a break from the heat. Officers accompany the kids on field trips.

Loss of the center could deprive children of a rare chance to get to know police officers on a friendly basis, officials said.

“We interact with kids as kids,” said Sgt. Cindy Brounsten, the LAPD’s West Valley Community Relations spokeswoman. “They’re not a radio call, they’re not a suspect, they’re not a victim.”