Struggling to Pick Up the Pieces

First came a surge of panic, the sense that she and others might not survive the collapse of their apartment building. Then there was the frenzied escape through a blind passageway tangled with rubble toward a shard of light, where the force of the shifting structure had ripped a hole in a wall.

Once away from danger, once on the sidewalk outside, once she had thanked God for life, a disturbing reality clouded Nelida Tovar’s euphoria.

“I thought, ‘What would become of me and my children? Would we be out on the street? Would anyone help us?’ I was so thankful to be alive, but we had nothing left.”

Now, along with two dozen families left homeless when their Echo Park building buckled on the morning of Dec. 8, Tovar, her three children and her companion are trying to start anew.

They stayed in a Red Cross shelter for 10 nights and then, with the agency’s assistance, moved into a motel near MacArthur Park. They spent the week before Christmas looking for an apartment, bolstered by the first installment in a $5,000-per-family grant from the city of Los Angeles--more money than many of the displaced residents had ever seen.

“If this had happened in Mexico, we never would have received help like this,” said Tovar’s companion, Adan Avalos, after a frustrating day of apartment hunting.

Avalos, a low-key, contemplative man, was buried under debris when the building collapsed. At the precise moment of the cave-in, he, Tovar and another woman were chatting in the building corridor, discussing the strange noises and structural shifts that many had noticed. Tovar’s children, like many youngsters, were in school at the time.

Without warning, the floor beneath Avalos gave and he tumbled down to the basement, a beam smashing into his head. The women helped haul him out and the three, holding hands, stumbled toward the sliver of light where the wall had split. Doctors at County-USC Medical Center inserted 10 staples to clamp his skull wound. Headaches and nightmares persist.

“I still wake up thinking, ‘The building is falling on top of me,’ ” Avalos, 40, said in a near-hush as he sits on the motel bed, the room filled with toys and other Christmas gifts donated by well-wishers. “I’m all nerves.”

A deep gash on Tovar’s right leg forced her to walk with crutches for a week. She performed her house-hunting rounds with a limp, her children gathered around her like baby chicks with their mother hen.

Like many, the couple wants to remain in the familiar Echo Park neighborhood. Tovar’s children--Giovanni, 12, Fabiola, 10, and Uriel Reyna, 6--are just beginning to adjust to area schools. Tovar, 36, returned to Mexico in June and brought them back with her in September. A fourth child, Ivan, 14, chose to stay behind, but she hopes he will follow.

“I want my children to have a chance, to learn English and have some opportunity beyond what they would have in Mexico,” she said. “If we all returned now, we’d be right back where we started.”

One of a family of 13, she earned a high-school degree in Mexico, she said, and wanted to pursue a career in social work. But economic necessity prompted her to take up selling fruit and produce from her home.

She and Avalos arrived separately in the last 18 months, borrowing money from relatives already in Los Angeles to pay coyotes (smugglers) to guide them across the border. They met at a Westwood restaurant where both worked. Before striking out for the north, Avalos, with a sixth-grade education, drifted from job to job--farmhand, petroleum-industry laborer, and, finally, assembly-line worker in U.S.-owned factories in Tijuana.

The couple may consider marriage someday, but Tovar is hesitant to commit because her first marriage ended badly. She is touched by how this slim, soft-spoken country boy from southern Veracruz state is committed to her children. “He is completely different from what my husband was,” she said with a laugh. “He always wants to help.”

Most of the newly homeless from the building at 1601 W. Park Ave. are immigrants from Mexico and Central America, a microcosm of the legions who toil in factories, construction sites, restaurants and elsewhere on the low-wage edges of the Southern California economy. Many lack documentation to obtain a driver’s license or set up a bank account.

One resident, Juan Francisco Pineda, father of two and devoted member of the Los Angeles-based club soccer team representing his hometown in Guatemala, was crushed to death as he exited the front door. About three dozen were injured.

Authorities are still investigating the cause of the collapse. Former tenants, who say the building had persistent maintenance problems, have retained a team of attorneys for possible civil lawsuits.

Tovar makes a living these days as a street vendor. She prepares tamales and atole, a sweet corn drink, and sells these and other items from a grocery cart that she pushes in and around Echo Park, starting at 6 a.m. or earlier. She can earn $100 a day.

“If my children are going to be here, what is the point of spending all my time working in a restaurant and not seeing them?” Tovar said at the motel. “This way, my hours are more flexible. I’ve always preferred to be my own boss.”

By Friday, about half the residents had found apartments. For Tovar and Avalos, the search went more slowly. They and the children scoured the streets of Echo Park, inquiring at “For Rent” signs and following tips from residents. All wore clothing donated or purchased with Red Cross vouchers--in Tovar’s case, a Seattle Mariners jacket.

Exhausted, the family approached a neighborhood gardener and asked whether he knew of any open flats. He asked the couple where they were from. Tovar said she had been living in Iguala, a town of 100,000 in the western state of Guerrero.

“That’s my hometown!” he said. “I’ll help you find something, don’t worry.”

They arranged to meet the gardener on a corner of Sunset Boulevard at 7 a.m. the next morning. The family rose at 5:30 a.m. and arrived, the children still half-asleep, after a trip via bus and foot. The gardener directed them to a one-bedroom apartment that had just become vacant. The size, and location--just across the street from Logan Elementary, where Tovar’s youngest attends classes--were ideal. The landlord wanted at least $500 a month, well above the $375 they had been paying for a stifling one-room apartment, but the couple was willing. They hoped to close the deal this week.

“Maybe, after all we have been through,” Tovar said, “things will finally get a little better for us now.”