After years of instability, he can make friends fast

Eight-year-old Kenneth Lopez has been living in his family’s new home in Cudahy only a week, but already the neighborhood kids are following him around or knocking on the family’s door, looking for him.

“He’s shy, but he makes friends so fast,” says Kenneth’s mother, Burrola.

The energetic second-grader runs in circles around his mom, alternately kicking a soccer ball and using it to shoot baskets into a trash can.

As the sun sets, Kenneth and his four siblings play in the parking lot of Belvedere Gym, the East Los Angeles facility where Kenneth’s stepdad, Victor Arreola, has twice-weekly wheelchair basketball practice.

“Be a little gentleman!” Burrola commands, and Kenneth sits down and squirms in his seat, his knees pulled under an enormous tie-dyed T-shirt.

Kenneth giggles each time he’s asked a question, but Burrola says that normally he’s very calm.

“Eres tranquilo,” she says to him affectionately. “He has patience with the other kids, with the situation.”

The “situation” that Burrola refers to is the family’s history of instability.

In the last few years, the seven-member family has moved in and out of a single bedroom in Burrola’s mother’s house in Boyle Heights. They spent some time in a motel and three months in a homeless shelter.

Before Burrola and Arreola were married a few years ago, the children were put in foster care when Kenneth’s father was arrested on charges of drug possession.

Kenneth was only 3 at the time and doesn’t remember being in foster care. His younger sister Xitlally was just 15 days old when she was removed from an incubator and put into a foster home, Burrola says.

Burrola spent a year and a half working to get the children back.

Then, after her marriage to Arreola and the arrival of two more kids, Burrola’s rocky relationship with her mother got worse.

The family spent the last year looking for a place of their own.

“It was hard,” Burrola says. “We were searching and searching.” But landlords continued to turn them down because of the number of young kids in the family. Burrola, 26, is expecting another child in October.

“Right now we’re testing ourselves,” she says of the new living situation.

Kenneth likes the new place a lot. He’s not allowed to play basketball or soccer in the backyard, but he can ride his bike.

This summer, Kenneth is excited about learning to swim. “I only know how to dog paddle,” he says, laughing.

With the help of Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, he’ll be attending Circle V Ranch Camp in Los Padres National Forest near Santa Barbara.

He’s mostly looking forward to sleeping overnight at camp. A beat later, he looks at his mom and says, “But I’m going to be homesick.”

About 10,000 children will go to camp this summer, thanks to $1.6 million raised last year.

The annual fund-raising campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which this year will match the first $1.1 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar.

Donations are tax-deductible. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make donations by credit card, go to latimes.com/summercamp.

To send checks, use the attached coupon. Do not send cash.

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

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Mail to: Los Angeles Times

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7/3/2006