Program Gives Blind Teens Sea Time

Valerie Alcalaz sniffed hard. Something had changed.

“What’s that smell?” she asked, from the back of the van.

“Tijuana,” said driver Frank Cardenas.

Valerie, 15, whipped out a perfume bottle and spritzed furiously, trying to mask the strange odor.

“I never smelled anything like that before,” she said.

The Moreno Valley girl and about a dozen other blind and nearly blind teenagers had just crossed into Mexico, embarking on a three-day kayaking adventure in which they would feel, smell and touch all they could not see. And if everything went according to plan, they would emerge with increased confidence, eager to take on the world.

The trip’s success largely depended on 44-year-old Erik Shaw. The burly ex-Green Beret, who heads the Wilderness Education Program in Ventura, had planned the journey with the Foundation for the Junior Blind months ago. This, his first international excursion, included some blind teens from Mexico, and he was determined that nothing go wrong.

“The whole experience will mold them,” he said. “The kids we will drop off will not be the same kids we picked up.”

Shaw, who did covert operations for the military in the Middle East for three years, founded the program 14 years ago after watching a group of Jordanian children construct a bridge out of barbed wire. He was impressed by their ingenuity, and wondered if American children could do the same.

“In the U.S. the kids have everything but they lack self-esteem,” he said. “They don’t go outside. We have kids in Oxnard who have never been to the ocean.”

Each month, 220 kids of all ages take part in Shaw’s wilderness programs. He has taken blind youngsters hiking in the Sierra and surfing in Carpinteria. Children confined to wheelchairs have gone on rock-climbing expeditions in which volunteers carried them up steep inclines while teaching them to use ropes and tie knots. This month, he plans to take blind children hiking up Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.

“Nothing is more natural than kids climbing rocks and climbing trees,” he said. “This is nothing new. Go back 100 years and everyone knew this stuff. Everyone could read a map or compass.”

Shaw’s office is full of mountain-climbing gear, backpacks, sleeping bags and snowshoes. A sign on his desk says, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

For Shaw, the immediate answer was to take a bunch of blind teens to Mexico for three days and see what would happen.

“We did training with blacked-out goggles,” he explained. “How do you teach blind kids without understanding what they are going through? That’s what makes us successful.”

In Mexico, Shaw and his volunteers transformed a lonesome stretch of beach 20 miles south of Ensenada into a small community. Dozens of tents were staked out on the sand. A fire pit was dug, and small gas lamps were placed in strategic locations to provide light at night for the 19 volunteers.

Hours before the teens arrived, Shaw addressed the volunteers in the military style he tends to favor. Quoting a Roman leader on the eve of battle, he declared, “What we do in life echoes in eternity!”

The vans pulled in and the teenagers spilled out, tired by the trip from Los Angeles but curious about what would follow. Some unfolded their canes and felt their way around the beach.

Valerie, who was born blind, found a chair by the smoky fire. As evening fell, a gentle wind swept off the bay.

“It gives you a totally different feel if you sit and listen to all the nature around you,” she said, her face turned toward the flames. “I don’t really get out very much. I’m a little nervous about kayaking, but if I have fears, I won’t do anything.”

A few feet away, Lucy Zamarron, 15, of Chihuahua, Mexico, also was experiencing something new -- the ocean.

“It’s a pretty sound,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I never heard a sound like it. My parents didn’t want to let me come, but I said I wanted to. I went to the mountains and deserts and now I want to know the sea.”

When the sun rose, she got her wish.

The beach was laid out with red, plastic kayaks. A group of kids gathered around, some stumbling over the kayaks and laughing at their clumsiness.

Christian Alvarado of Los Angeles was the exception. He stood as straight as a soldier, never uttering a peep. The 17-year-old son of Salvadoran immigrants was amazed at where he was.

“I can’t believe I don’t have to pay for this,” he said quietly.

The teenagers were dressed in wetsuits, helmets and lifejackets. They were put in the kayaks and made to balance on inner tubes to get a feel for the ocean swells they would soon experience.

Christian was the first in. Kelly Wigglesworth, a program volunteer and cast member of the original “Survivor” series, pushed his kayak into the surf.

“Go, go, go! Paddle, Christian, paddle!” she yelled.

A wave broke over him and he disappeared. Suddenly, he surfaced and paddled ferociously into calmer, deeper water.

A cheer went up from the beach. A soaking wet Christian spun around in his kayak. He couldn’t see who was yelling, but he smiled in the right direction.

Tim Hosbond of Lake Elsinore, who lost his vision at age 2 because of pressure in his skull, was next.

“Never give up, never surrender!” the 17-year-old shouted before knifing through the water, scaling a wave and heading for Christian, who had been joined by volunteers floating nearby.

Then came Carmen Cruz of La Verne.

She was born premature -- the size of a Barbie doll, her father said. She was also born blind.

Now 18 and considerably taller, she listened to instructions, replying with a curt “yep” when asked if she understood. Soon she was paddling over a kelp forest with silver fish glinting below her.

The kayakers paddled around the sunny bay without incident, although a few wiped out on the way in as waves crested near the beach. Volunteers were always at hand.

“These kids are risk-takers,” Shaw said. “They will push themselves farther than we have pushed ourselves. The blind kids have opened our eyes.”

A devoted cadre of volunteers who dedicate their spare time to the program is vital to its success.

“It’s hard to do this and work a regular job,” said Ian Potter, a mechanical engineer from Ojai. “But these are choices we make. They give us back more than we ever give.”

The program is chronically strapped for cash. Shaw is overextended most of the time, often squeaking by with last-minute donations to his nonprofit group.

“The saddest commentary on all this is how hard it is to fund it,” he said. “But during the darkest times, I do a day trip with the kids and remember why I do it.”

Some of the reasons became obvious as the Mexican trip progressed. The blind teens became good at kayaking, slipping in and out of the water with ease. They grew loud and boisterous, playing jokes on the adults and making moves on the opposite sex. No one stuck out. For once, everyone fit in.

Jorge Alonso Estrada, 15, played guitar and sang lustily around the fire each night. His good looks, deep voice and dark glasses gave him a passing resemblance to the blind singer Jose Feliciano. Some of the teenage girls were soon swooning to his crooning.

Wearing a crooked grin, he admitted that the best part of the trip was “las chicas,” or the girls. Shaw declared Jorge, from Chihuahua, “most likely to win a Latin Grammy.”

After kayaking, beachcombing and making a shopping trip into the little village of La Bufadora, the group boarded the vans for the trip home.

“Time went by too fast,” lamented Carmen. “I’m sad to see it end.”

Valerie, once pensive and unsure, was luminous. She recalled that someone told her she had pretty eyes. And she got used to the strange scents around her.

“It just smells like Mexico,” she said.

After much hugging, the vans left in a cloud of dust, past the olive merchants along the road and straight on to the border. Quiet settled over the beach as volunteers folded tents and packed duffel bags.

“The hardest thing about a gig is coming back home,” Shaw said, looking down the suddenly lonesome beach. “I have climbed, surfed and jumped from airplanes, but this is the perfect feeling, the best natural high.”

*

A video report on the children and volunteers who made this kayaking trip to Ensenada, Mexico, accompanies this story on The Times’ Web site. Go to www.latimes.com/kayakers.