After an ambush, a neighborly future?

Call me naive, but when I headed up to Kagel Canyon one night last week, I had no idea I was about to be ambushed. It’s a good place for an ambush, too, rugged and remote near Sylmar on the edge of the Angeles National Forest, with more coyotes and rattlesnakes than people.

My mission was to find out if residents were still determined to fight efforts by the Union Rescue Mission to move more than 200 women and children off skid row and into transitional housing at an abandoned, 71-acre senior nursing facility on Lopez Canyon Road.

After 21 months of opposition and behind-the-scenes negotiation, the clock was ticking. Neighbors had until 5 p.m. Friday to appeal last month’s approval of the project by the regional planning commission.

I parked the car at Dexter Park, met a couple of residents who seemed nice enough, and we walked into the the gymnasium of the rec center. A few more people arrived, and then a few more, and finally Kagel Canyon Civic Assn. president Brian Gavin showed up. After some innocent chitchat, the room suddenly fell quiet, and he turned to me.

“You thought you were going to get a scoop,” Gavin said. “Didn’t you?”

Well, I said, I thought I was going to find out whether residents intended to file an appeal.

No chance, Gavin growled. And it would be the homeowners asking the questions.

They could hardly wait to start hammering me.

Why had I called them hill-dwelling rabble rousers? (Because they are, as evidenced by this ambush.)

Why hadn’t I gotten their side of the story? (Their opposition has been noted by me and others, though obviously not to their satisfaction.)

Why was I so hard on L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich? (Do I have to answer that one?)

How could I be such an idiot? (I plead ignorance.)

The amazing thing is that by the time I left, about two hours later, I kind of liked these people. We didn’t plan a barbecue, but as Bud Terusa put it in defending the honor of Kagel Canyon residents:

“We’re not bad people.”

Among other things, they were concerned about the fire danger posed by bringing 200 urban people -- including teenagers -- into such dry, forested land, and about whether the mission would be staffed adequately enough to keep it all under control.

OK, those are legitimate concerns. But I told my new friends they were off-base in suggesting Hope Gardens would be overrun with addicts, or that there was a secret plot to eventually move all skid row services to the foothills. And because Hope Gardens is a little over a mile from Kagel Canyon, I still didn’t see how it could have much impact on the daily lives of longtime residents.

It’s a shame there’s a need for such a place at all, I said. But the only way to eliminate the horrors of skid row is to have far more services available in far more places.

And yet more than a year after county supervisors announced a plan for five regional centers, not a single site has been agreed upon because nobody wants to shoulder any part of the burden.

By the time I left Kagel Canyon, I understood the residents a little better and would like to think the reverse was true. But more important, Antonovich’s staff continued trying to negotiate the last two weeks with residents and representatives of the mission.

Both sides gave a little, said Union Rescue Mission director Andy Bales and Kathryn Barger-Leibrich, Antonovich’s chief deputy. Among other things, Bales agreed to limit the number of teenagers at Hope Gardens, to start small and gradually add more residents, to do background checks of staff and visitors, and to add security staffing on nights and weekends.

The 5 p.m. deadline passed Friday without an appeal from my new friends in Kagel Canyon, which means that Hope Gardens can actually open. Bales, relieved and delighted, spent Friday afternoon sending out thanks to everyone and vowing to be a good neighbor.

Bales said the women will be able to enroll at L.A. Mission College and will be held accountable to pursue a plan to move out on their own after two or three years at Hope Gardens. They’ll have access to job training and parenting classes at the facility and will get help finding housing when they move on.

Takeisha Weatherspoon and her 5-year-old daughter, Tylese, will be moving from the downtown mission to Hope Gardens within two weeks. An LVN who wants to become an RN, Weatherspoon landed at the mission seven months ago, after the sale of the mobile home she was renting, and said she can’t wait to get her daughter away from the drugs and violence of skid row.

“It’s going to be lovely,” Weatherspoon said.

I suppose I could end by taking a poke at Antonovich here for not getting on board sooner, but I hate to spoil what could be the start of a beautiful relationship. Give me a call, Mike. There’s a lot we could accomplish together, and I’d much rather be in your county Cadillac than staking it out.

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steve.lopez@latimes.com