Being There for the Kids of Skid Row
When Elizabeth Buzenes and her family finally moved out of a hotel on skid row, they did not forget the children they had left behind.
Although she has little more to offer than most of the 50 or so families who still live in the 296-room Ford Hotel, Buzenes gives its young residents what many children take for granted: a chance to build a sand castle on the beach or take a dip in a public pool.
“She’s a godsend,” says Geraldine Martinez, who lives at the hotel with her three children and nephew. “She will pick them up and take them out for an hour in the park, the zoo--whatever she can get donations for.”
Sometimes Buzenes recruits friends with cars to ferry up to 15 youths to a place more scenic and safer than the east downtown streets. Other times she solicits shelters or churches with buses to play chauffeur.
When the MTA waived bus fares for five days after last year’s strike, it was her chance to take a gaggle of youths for a joy ride.
“I’ve always had a heart for kids,” says the 32-year-old mother of seven, known as Lisa to many, and called Mom by some young fans. “I guess that’s why I have so many,” she adds with a blushing chuckle.
The children seem to have inherited both her broad grin and her generous spirit. Last Christmas, her son David, 11, wrapped a Pendleton jacket he had just received and gave it to a friend who was often cold when they went out to play. “It seemed like the right thing to do,” he says.
And his 13-year-old sister Crystal, on a moment’s inspiration, gave her Christmas bike to a family at the hotel because, she says, “I felt that in my heart I had to.”
The Buzenes family has been recipient as well as benefactor. With the help of the International Dream Center church, the family now lives in a one-bedroom apartment next to the church on Bellevue Avenue.
Buzenes’ departure from the hotel last November was a sad day for many. “When Lisa was brought over here,” says Johnny Buzenes, her father and a church volunteer, “the children ran after the van crying.”
The children of skid row can always use a little kindness. Families at the Ford say children are exposed to various dangers and vices--used hypodermic needles, prostitution, violence, even an occasional rotting corpse.
The Ford Hotel has maintenance and security staff, a children’s learning center, and volunteers who work with youths, says Charlene Gowers, executive director for the nonprofit Shelter First, which runs the hotel.
“We could say, ‘No more children here,’ ” says Gowers, who disputes the residents’ view of problems. “But where would they go?”
Buzenes knows firsthand how valuable the Ford Hotel can be.
When her husband took his own life in 1991, she was left alone to raise her children on welfare. Besides Crystal and David, there are Michael, 16, Daniel, 15, Alexis 10, Ecstasy, 5, and Anthony, 3.
Then came a series of abdominal surgeries from 1994 to 1999, she says, followed by eviction from her Norwalk apartment last year when she could no longer pay the rent. Like other Ford residents, Buzenes says she could not find an affordable apartment that would accept a large family.
After a few months of living with friends while her children were dispersed among relatives, she says, “it was too depressing without them.” Some of the family reunited in one of the Ford Hotel’s one-room units for $250 a month.
Buzenes’ heart immediately went out to the children and families there.
It embraced Martinez--even before the two women had met. While Martinez, 42, was away for four months, her children lived at the hotel with her husband, a newspaper deliveryman whose job kept him away at night and asleep most of the day.
“My kids were free-running,” she says. “Lisa kind of took them under her wing, helped them stay out of trouble and took them to church with her.”
Robert Martinez, 13, seems unlikely to forget it. “She’s the only one that really cares about us,” he says with a shy grin.
In June, Sandra Moreno’s 19-year-old son, Louie Solarano, was fatally shot and robbed of money she says he was saving to help her and his five siblings move from the hotel to an apartment. Buzenes reached out to the children.
“She’s helping them all through their depression,” says the 38-year-old mother of eight, clutching a photo of her pale son stretched out in a coffin. “She’s helping me too.”
This month, Buzenes helped the grieving family do what then seemed impossible: She took the Morenos and other Ford dwellers to Yosemite Recreation Center in Eagle Rock, where Danielle Moreno, 4, and her brother Steven, 9, celebrated their birthdays.
It was as a Ford resident and church member that Buzenes brought the plight of these and other hotel families to the attention of the Dream Center.
Last November, center clergy called on church members to give to its annual Adopt a Block program. For $105, they said, gifts and food could be given to six poor downtown and South-Central families. (That year, 200,000 Christmas gifts were given to 45,000 families.)
Before boarding the church bus that night to return to the hotel, Buzenes handed the pastor an envelope, recalls Aaron Jayne, an associate pastor at the Assembly of God church. “When we opened the letter,” he says, “two bills fell out: a $100 bill and a $5 bill.” There also was a letter describing the hardships of hotel families.
“That letter just broke our hearts,” says Jayne, adding that it prompted the church to bring programs, such as children’s nutrition and tutoring, to hotel residents. “She opened our eyes to a whole world of need down there.”
Buzenes, and her children, knew it was a needy world even before their time on skid row.
When the family still lived in Norwalk, Buzenes says, David had a classmate who was teased because “he was always dirty.” David brought the boy home one day.
“He said, ‘Mom, can you give him a bath, some clothes and something to eat?’ ” Buzenes recalls. So she did. The next day, the boy appeared at her front door with his disheveled brothers and sisters in tow. She felt compelled, she says, to do the same for them.