A Never-Ending Support System

By Susannah Rosenblatt

Dec. 12, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Mary Cruz knows exactly where she’d be if it weren’t for Catholic Charities.

Still addicted to methamphetamine, living off welfare, sometimes homeless and waking up wondering where her next $5 for drugs would come from, she said.

“My life was excuse after excuse after excuse,” said the 44-year-old San Bernardino mother of six, eyes filling with tears as she described her former self.

Instead, she has been sober for nearly two years, and until recently was working as a housekeeper at Redlands Community Hospital.

Cruz ended up at Catholic Charities San Bernardino/Riverside when she thought there was nowhere else to turn.

The national organization, with 15 offices across the Inland Empire, specializes in helping people in crisis through its Hope in the City program: paying utility bills when the lights are about to be shut off; offering struggling families food and diapers to get by until the next paycheck; and in Cruz’s case, pushing her to complete drug rehabilitation programs to help her kick a habit of nearly 20 years.

Her case manager, Jo Ann Wilkes, “stuck on me like glue” when Cruz was fighting to stay clean, Cruz said. “She talked to me like my mom never did,” said Cruz, who is studying to be a drug and alcohol counselor at San Bernardino Valley College.

Wilkes is one of three case managers at the organization’s San Bernardino office. She sees about 100 clients a month. The four-person office helped about half of the 38,000 people served in Riverside and San Bernardino counties last year, said Beverly Earl, director of the San Bernardino County community and emergency services department.

The group was boosted by a $20,000 grant from the 2005 Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which raises money for nonprofit groups serving disadvantaged children and teenagers in Los Angeles and Ventura counties and the Inland Empire.

Earl said Catholic Charities staffers and volunteers must come up with creative solutions to a range of problems. Atop a pile of papers on Earl’s desk was a letter from an inmate in county jail, asking for help in stopping a suspected identity thief from using her checking account.

“We sort of connect the dots,” said Earl, who’s been with the organization for 23 years. “We’re glue that makes it all work.”

The group, which runs on a $4.1-million annual budget, often refers people to other nonprofits that can help. Ten years ago, Earl scraped together two bags of toys and a holiday dinner for Toni Brown when she showed up at Catholic Charities’ office days before Christmas, nearly broke and growing desperate.

“It bailed me out,” said Brown, 38, growing emotional at the memory. “I was a single parent, I was on my own. I didn’t know how I was going to get a Christmas for my kids.”

And unlike other social services that might offer one-time assistance, Catholic Charities provides a longer-term safety net, said Brown, who now works as a freelance writer and takes marketing classes.

“It’s a never-ending support system,” the San Bernardino mother of three said. Four years ago, Catholic Charities again helped her: this time to escape a domestic violence situation, provide beds and comforters to her children and urge her to take parenting classes.

“I knew I had a past,” Brown said, referring to previous alcohol and drug use. “I knew I could have ended up in a very bad situation. They helped me detour from that.”

Just like Cruz, who now makes sure that her children are in school with hair combed and clothes neat. And because of that, for the first time, she takes pride in herself too.

Catholic Charities’ clients are “just falling through the cracks,” Earl said. “We’re just trying to catch them.”

Money raised last year has provided $1.4 million to help children in need in 2005.

The annual fundraising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $500,000 in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To give by credit card, go to latimes.com/holidaycampaign. To send checks, use the attached coupon. Please do not send cash.

Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times.

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