Unneeded Cleanup Burns Leisure World Resident

Leisure World officials told Erika Furlong-Swenson that a fire next door had left her Seal Beach apartment contaminated with asbestos from the building’s ventilation system. She had little choice, they said, but to move out for months and let cleanup crews throw away everything she owned -- including a German cuckoo clock, cookbooks and other possessions she had spent a lifetime collecting.

Then Leisure World billed her $4,995 for the work -- outraging some of her neighbors, who picketed outside the retirement community in November to demonstrate their anger.

Now it turns out that tests completed before the work was done showed there was no asbestos in her apartment, according to an investigation launched by the South Coast Air Quality Management District at the request of residents.

But Leisure World officials have not acknowledged the mistake, the 63-year-old retiree said Tuesday. The community’s attorney has contacted her to suggest they could iron things out, if she agreed to split the cost of arbitration.

“I would like for them to admit they made a mistake and make good on it,” Furlong-Swenson said. “I lost most of my belongings. The stuff is gone.”

Companies that tested for contamination and performed the cleanup have declined to discuss the case. Leisure World officials did not return calls seeking comment.

Furlong-Swenson and her neighbor, Hildegard Zeller, 85, were billed for cleanup costs after the fire in January 2003. Leisure World paid for alternative housing while the work was done but did not compensate them for their lost possessions.

Furlong-Swenson has spent the last few months trying to get answers from officials at Leisure World without an attorney because she says she cannot afford one. Zeller, meanwhile, has dropped her fight and has declined to discuss the controversy.

Not everyone is sympathetic to their plight. Some Leisure World residents have criticized the women’s supporters in letters to the 9,000-member community’s weekly publication, the Golden Rain News.

“If I were as dissatisfied as much as all of you seem to be, I would be packing my bags and moving elsewhere,” wrote Sandy Goldfarb, a resident who also is an officer in Leisure World administration.