Does he have to eat dog food?

IT’S CHRISTMAS, and Patrick Porch is broke.

He’s hardly alone in that. But how he got broke is a singular story that bears some resemblance to that of Tennie Pierce, the black former firefighter whose charges of institutional discrimination and harassment (and whose scuttled multimillion-dollar settlement) sparked ongoing public debate. The difference is that Porch is still struggling to be heard.

Porch is the county hospital employee whose life was made miserable when he tried to bring a misdeed to light. In 2003, according to court documents, the 40-year-old project manager came across more than $1 million worth of suspicious purchase orders at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center and showed them to his boss -- despite the fact her signature appeared on several of the orders. Porch says the documents showed that hospital managers bought high-end home-improvement items with hospital money -- including brass and crystal faucet fixtures, chef quality knives, stopwatches and a 94-gallon fish pond.

For his efforts, he says, Porch was stripped of work duties and passed over for promotions. In September 2005, a mysterious assailant threw a flammable chemical into Porch’s eyes in the men’s room at work, temporarily blinding him. Porch went on medical leave and never returned to work.

In October 2006, he filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation, among other things. In the suit, Porch -- who is African American -- charged that he had been passed over in favor of white employees. Around the time it was filed, hospital officials acknowledged that, in connection with Porch’s allegations, some employees had been fired or disciplined for breaking purchasing rules, but they denied having retaliated against him. Hospital officials noted that the district attorney had opened an investigation into the matter and said they looked forward to the results.

Since the bathroom incident, Porch had been collecting workers’ compensation. Then, just after the lawsuit was filed, the money stopped coming. Porch’s last check was for a whopping 27 cents. Not long after that, he got a letter from the county announcing that his health benefits were ending as well. The county says only that they stopped the benefits because of a lack of “medical evidence” to justify them.

Porch has had to borrow money to pay the bills and cover the mortgage on his Compton home. It’s quite a comedown for a man who had settled comfortably into his role as a versatile, team-playing county employee. His attitude about what has happened wavers between determination and disbelief.

But the worst part of his ordeal isn’t what his former employer has done to him. It’s what his elected officials haven’t done. Porch has tirelessly taken his meticulously documented story to community leaders and elected officials, many of whom are African American. With the exception of Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, none have offered him much support in his attempts to hold the county accountable. Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose district includes Harbor, did admit in a TV news segment on county fraud that Porch likely suffered retaliation for blowing the whistle on his colleagues. But that’s as far as her support went.

So, although the case has potential implications of racism, rallying black leadership around it has been a resounding nonstarter. Part of the problem is that, unlike Pierce’s dog-food moment, there is no single dramatic incident or turning point. And Porch figures the politicians simply have too much to lose politically in taking on the hospital. Porch has made some headway with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; a meeting with the governor may be set for early next year.

Only one place has offered Porch unflagging support: his longtime church, the Tree of Life Missionary Baptist Church in Watts. “Pat was trying to right a wrong,” said Assistant Pastor Al Johnson, “and he’s tenacious enough to not let this go. That’s why we should all stand behind him.”

One glimmer of official solidarity came last week when the city of Carson and Dymally’s office presented Porch with awards for his years of work in the county hospital system and for battling racial and other injustices within that system. They were modest gestures, but Porch was satisfied -- and relieved -- that public recognition of his plight was coming from someone, somewhere.

The burly, low-key Porch can’t resist comparing himself these days not simply to the burly, high-profile Tennie Pierce but to boxing great Muhammad Ali. Thanks to his opposition to the Vietnam War, Ali lost his boxing privileges in his prime. “He didn’t fight for three years, seven months and four days,” mused Porch. “It’s been three years for me.” Though for him, unlike for Ali, that’s three years of swinging.