For Carol, Taking Care of Folks Is ‘a Kind of Ministry, Really’

If you’re weary of the tales of graspers, poseurs and gun wielders that make up so much of the media’s breathless narrative of L.A., if you need some persuasive evidence that the city still includes citizens who calculate their compensation in the currency of other people’s happiness, you should pass an afternoon with Carol Lyles.

On this particular afternoon, Lyles is at work in Jack Hammond’s walk-up apartment in Hawthorne. She and Hammond could not be more unalike, sitting there in side-by-side recliners, now nodding agreement, now giving each other static.

Carol Lyles is 45 and black, a tall, sturdy woman in slacks, T-shirt and sneakers who speaks very loudly.

Jack Hammond is white and in his 93rd year. He wears thick cotton pajamas and keeps his wheelchair parked in front of his recliner, having his say in a voice that’s still plenty supple.

Lyles and Hammond, a long-retired city fireman who has outlived two wives and all of his old friends, are explaining their peculiar employee-employer relationship.

“I’m basically here because he needs somebody to talk to,” Lyles says.

“I also need somebody to write my checks for me because I can’t see very well,” Hammond adds.

“I bathe him. I cook him good meals so he doesn’t get sick. Most of my people I also take to church and block-club meetings. . . . “

”. . . . but she can’t take me in the car much because I can’t walk down the outside steps.”

“Sometimes I just sling him over my shoulder and carry him. Like when I take him to my house to give him a bath. He doesn’t like the bathtub here because the shower doors get in the way. But in my bathtub, he can just lay back like Greta Garbo. A lot of elderly in this city, they just get shafted. They’ve got nobody to take care of them. “

“The city is a lonely place,” Hammond says. “But Carol is my buddy.”

Last year, Lyles was one of the 74,000 home-care workers in Los Angeles County who, after a decade-long campaign, gained union recognition as members of Service Employees International Local 434B. It was the largest successful organizing drive in recent American history.

Still, Lyles receives only $6.25 an hour when working for a client who’s been approved for a state-and-county program called In-home Supportive Services.

Moreover, only one of the five elderly people she cares for is IHSS qualified. Jack Hammond is a private client. She ostensibly charges him $6.25, but doesn’t get paid by the week or month. Mostly, Hammond helps Lyles pay on her college loans and for the insurance premiums on her modest house in South-Central, bequeathed her by an elderly woman whom she cared for free of charge for 16 years. Lyles’ three other elderly clients--women of 76, 87 and 89 who live in her neighborhood--pay her what they can when they can, which is little and seldom.

Lyles works almost every day of almost every week. In 1999, she says, she earned $6,600. Twenty-five years ago, she bought a 1971 Volkswagen Super Beetle and she drives it still.

Hers is not the standard of living one would expect to be enjoyed by a woman who has a bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount and a master’s in public administration from Pepperdine.

“Carol doesn’t get much involved in money,” says Father John Clark, a Jesuit who met her more than 20 years ago when he was vice president for academics at Loyola Marymount. “She’s very contented with her work and really dedicated to it. She has just found her niche in life and loves it. It’s a kind of ministry, really.”

Lyles’ history of bringing comfort to old people started when she was 12 and would sneak into a convalescent home in her 126th Street-and-Avalon neighborhood to trim the toenails and fingernails of neglected elderly residents. “I don’t know,” she sighs. “I’ve always had a soft spot for them, especially if they’re 80-plus.”

Her work has defined her life. It killed her eight-year marriage. It’s given her a loud voice (all those dim-eared clients) but also a quiet, almost cheerful acceptance of death (so far, she has seen 29 clients die).

Convinced that heavenly accounts are ever being kept, Lyles is not concerned about being able to provide financially for her own care as she grows old. “I’ll be looking for some kid to take a liking to me when I get that age myself,” she says.

The kind of devotion Lyles shows to her clients is not uncommon among home-care workers, no matter how little they’re paid or how low the regard in which we unthinkingly hold them. But with the number of people needing home care expected to double over the next 20 years, I don’t think we can rely on their altruism indefinitely.

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James Ricci’s e-mail address is james.ricci@latimes.com