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Life & Times Transcript

3/20/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

While their loved ones are putting their lives on the line in Iraq, what's being done to help the families left behind?

Tina McDermott>> You just have to be really strong and hold it together. You have to do it for your husband because, when he's in Iraq, he does not want to hear all the stuff that's going on at home. He doesn't want to hear about the problems. He just wants to call and know that everybody's okay and everything's fine and you're paying the car payment.

Val Zavala>> And then, she's called the Mother Theresa of Los Angeles. How one nun has helped thousands of women rebuild their lives.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> The war in Iraq has lasted a lot longer than most Americans expected, but it's not just our troops who are making a sacrifice. Families are feeling the stress, everything from the emotional to the financial. So are they getting the support they need? Saul Gonzalez went to Camp Pendleton to find out.

Saul Gonzalez>> Few places in America are as touched by the war in Iraq as Camp Pendleton, California.

[Film Clip]

Saul Gonzalez>> The sprawling Marine Corps base just north of San Diego. Marines that train and live at Camp Pendleton have served multiple tours of duty in Iraq and many of them have been killed or wounded in the conflict.

Camp Pendleton, like other military bases, is also a community, home to thousands of military families who face financial and emotional challenges brought on by war. When they need extra help, many of the families turn to this woman.

Faye Bell>> "And then this is the information sheet kind of about what we're doing."

Saul Gonzalez>> Faye Bell, a former Navy pilot, is the Director of Military Outreach Ministry. It's a Presbyterian-affiliated organization that provides aid and support to Camp Pendleton's enlisted Marines and their families, regardless of their faith.

Faye Bell>> Whenever they come to us, you know, we don't want them to come humbly to use our services. We want them to know that we're doing this out of gratitude for what their families are sacrificing, what their husbands who are deployed are sacrificing and what their kids are sacrificing. We really want people to freely feel like we are patriots that support them and their efforts, and we also do it because it's our Christian duty to help others.

Saul Gonzalez>> The Ministry's highest profile at Camp Pendleton involves the operation of a food distribution center in an old on-base warehouse.

Faye Bell>> "Well, let's get our hands together and let's make a circle of prayer."

Saul Gonzalez>> Before it opens, volunteers are led in a prayer by Bell.

Faye Bell>> "We ask that You keep those that are in harm's way safe and keep Your loving hand on them guiding them back to their families safely."

Saul Gonzalez>> At the center, Marines and their spouses can come and stock up on the essentials free of charge. Bread and biscuits, canned goods, baby food and fresh produce.

>> "Yeah, you can take as much as you want."

Saul Gonzalez>> This help is deeply appreciated by base personnel like Corporals Cary Pullman and Jericho Garcia.

Corporal Cary Pullman>> It really does help, you know. It's nice seeing all these people provide the service. They usually get a really good turnout and we really appreciate it.

Corporal Jericho Garcia>> Especially when you have a wife that's at home with a kid, you know. It definitely helps out financially.

>> "So help yourself."

Saul Gonzalez>> The Ministry also organizes parenting classes, religious counseling and social gatherings for young wives, many of whom are living outside of their hometowns for the first time and must fend for themselves while their spouses are overseas.

Faye Bell>> "Did you hear about our Mom's Club? Okay, well, you need to know about this more than anybody." They move from all over the country and some out of the country. They move here to this area all alone. They know no one and then they have a child and their husband deploys and that leaves them there all by themselves. That's basically what we are here for, just to keep that sense of community going and let them know that there's a place for them.

>> "Thank you for your service."

>> "All right. Thank you."

Saul Gonzalez>> With many enlisted Marines making between fifteen to twenty-one thousand dollars a year, money is also a big concern for these families.

Tina McDermott>> It's hard. It's really hard. Actually, finances is one of the things we struggle with a lot.

Saul Gonzalez>> Tina McDermott, whose husband is a Navy Corpsman, is familiar with the unique pressures of the home front and the importance of being stoic.

Tina McDermott>> You just have to be really strong and hold it together. You have to do it for your husband because, when he's in Iraq, he does not want to hear all the stuff that's going on at home. He doesn't want to hear about the problems. He just wants to call and know that everybody's okay and everything's fine and you're paying the car payment.

I can tell you, I was definitely weak before and things started to fall apart in our marriage. I was like, you know what, I have to just pull it together for the kids, for my husband, and we just have like a really good bond.

Saul Gonzalez>> Institutionally, the Marine Corps, like other branches of the armed forces, says it takes care of its own, offering a wide range of support services to service personnel and their families. These services were reviewed one recent evening at Camp Pendleton's theater.

Colonel Sam Mundy>> "There's a wealth of resources out there that you can tap into while we're deployed."

Saul Gonzalez>> Here, members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, who are about to be sent to the Middle East, gathered with their families for a pre-deployment meeting. Speakers who addressed the audience covered everything from subsidized on-base housing and child care to the dangers of not being legally prepared for the possible combat death of a spouse.

>> "If you die without a will, your property will be distributed according to state law. If you die without a will, the state will appoint guardians to raise your children. So obviously that's something that's very important to you."

Saul Gonzalez>> Like many here, Corporal Hugh Clark and his wife, Asia, are most interested in learning how they can stay in touch while he's deployed. So you want to know how to get word to each other in case there's --

Asia Clark>> -- definitely. Since we're expecting our first child and he's not going to be here when the baby comes, you know, this is a great way for us to get contact information so that we can contact each other just in case something happens while I'm in labor or something like that.

Saul Gonzalez>> Colonel Sam Mundy, the commanding officer of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, says helping families is an essential part of modern military life.

Colonel Sam Mundy>> The way I characterize it is that family readiness is important, personal readiness is important, so they all work together for the common good, so that they can be relieved and know that their wives and husbands are taken care of while they're gone.

Saul Gonzalez>> The final speaker at the event was Navy Commander and Camp Pendleton Chaplain, Val Jensen.

Chaplain Val Jensen>> "All that we want to do is to make this available so that you have the free exercise of religion."

Saul Gonzalez>> Chaplain Jensen says that he hopes he and his colleagues help prepare families spiritually for the challenges of military family life during wartime.

Chaplain Val Jensen>> I would hope that they be more encouraged, that they would be able to meet their responsibilities with a certain strength that has been, you know, enhanced because of their worship experience.

Faye Bell>> "Oh, there you go. Look at how cute all the pink stuff is."

Saul Gonzalez>> As she does her work, Faye Bell worries that, even after years of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans still have little understanding of the day in and day out hardships experienced by service families.

Faye Bell>> We're always going to have a military. There's always going to be military families and there's always going to be some struggles that are automatically attached to being a military family. They take those struggles with grace and the average citizen in our country needs to be aware of the struggles that these young families go through.

Saul Gonzalez>> For Life and Times, I'm Saul Gonzalez.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Gang warfare in Santa Barbara on State Street in broad daylight? It happened, leaving a fifteen year old dead and a fourteen year old accused of murder. Many people were surprised, but not the police who have been running gang patrols there for a while. Jim Hill went along last August where he saw the roots of the recent violence.

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James Hill>> State Street fills with a festive crowd every year in early August.

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James Hill>> It's a five-day celebration of Santa Barbara's Spanish heritage known as Fiesta.

Sergeant Ralph Molina>> Tonight? Anywhere between fifty to seventy-five thousand people tonight.

James Hill>> Santa Barbara Police Sergeant Ralph Molina will spend his night scanning the thousands of people for something this city is not normally known for: street gangs.

Sergeant Ralph Molina>> "What you got?"

>> "Fighting with the west side. They grabbed him and everybody kind of scattered."

Sergeant Ralph Molina>> There was a fight here. The gang unit guys were right here on the block and grabbed them right away.

James Hill>> The west side and east side mean gang turf in Santa Barbara. Hard to believe in a city where it's difficult to buy a home for less than a million dollars. This neighborhood west of the 101 Freeway is home to Santa Barbara's working poor, mainly Latino families who provide the labor in this posh city. This gang graffiti marks it as west side gang territory.

Eddy Arumbula>> I seen on the news that the east side and the west side have been stabbing each other. I mean, what point is that? I don't get it. So, yeah, there's been a lot of problems with the gangsters lately. I have a son and a wife and I don't want trouble. I don't want any trouble with them at all.

James Hill>> You're afraid of them?

Eddy Arumbula>> Yeah, I am, to be honest with you.

James Hill>> The rival east side gang lives in this mainly Latino neighborhood in the shadow of elegant hillside homes. Police estimate that the two gangs combined have up to seven hundred members in the city of ninety-two thousand and they're growing, mainly by recruiting youngsters barely in their teens.

Chief Cam Sanchez>> I think that's the saddest part for me, as a parent, as a Latino, to see that young people choose to do this based on where they live and they are the same color, same ethnicity. They come from the same country. They eat the same foods. They speak the same languages and they allow a street or a side of town to dictate who they're going to be. I find that very tragic.

James Hill>> Police say that the gangs are becoming more violent. They found these weapons on suspected gang members in recent months, a period in which there have been two near fatal stabbings. Investigators also fear that some Santa Barbara gang members are expanding from turf wars to drug dealing.

Sergeant Ralph Molina>> Our gangs here are starkly turf gangs. It's about this is my neighborhood, my barrio. I don't like you because you're from that other side of town. So ours have historically been always turf, but like I said, the last year and a half or two years, we've seen that transition into the narcotics. So now we're starting to see the gangs getting more involved in the sales of narcotics.

[Film Clip]

James Hill>> State Street and its nightclubs and restaurants are the heart of Fiesta, but this same street literally is the center line. It's the boundary between east side and west side gangs. It was on this street during Fiesta in 1992 that Santa Barbara had its first gang killing.

[Film Clip]

James Hill>> The revelry during Fiesta grows wilder late at night. More and more young men from the barrio show up in the crowds to taunt each other and the police.

[Film Clip]

James Hill>> Police say that gangs from other cities have been showing up for the celebration here in recent years, so many that up to forty percent of all the law enforcement officers on the streets during Fiesta are pulling gang patrol. Many of the officers are sent here from surrounding cities and counties as far south as Oxnard and north into the San Joaquin Valley. They try to spot gangs from their jurisdictions and move in to stop fights quickly.

>> "I was walking and I see some blows."

>> "Did any of your friends get hit?"

>> "I don't know."

>> "You don't know?

James Hill>> The injured man told police that he was from Ventura. Officers say they found this man running from the scene. He said he's from Oxnard. "Can you tell us what happened?" But he wouldn't talk about the blood on his head, chest and shirt.

[Film Clip]

James Hill>> Officers in the gang units rushed from one location to another. Each time they spotted a known gang member, parolee or someone on probation.

>> "This is a local east sider from here. This is one of his buddies from Lompoc. He's here visiting."

>> "On probation?"

>> "Yeah. They both are."

>> "Pull right here on the corner."

James Hill>> Police pulled over cars for traffic violations and questioned those on probation or parole. They checked tattoos to identify possible gang affiliation. Police took two ball bats and what looked like marijuana from this truck, then questioned and released the five men who'd been cruising State Street.

We tried to get suspected gang members to talk with us, but they wouldn't. In the past, they've complained in Santa Barbara news articles that police are harassing them, that all they're guilty of is hanging out with their friends. But police say their heavy patrols prevent violence.

[Film Clip]

James Hill>> Police stopped and questioned more than sixty people by the end of their shift and nearly half were suspected gang members. But no one was seriously hurt on this crowded night along State Street. The crowds finally thinned in the early morning hours and another day of Fiesta seemed to be ending on a mellow note.

[Film Clip]

James Hill>> In Santa Barbara, I'm James Hill for Life and Times.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> For some people, life is all about money. For others, fame. And for many, it's about family. But for very few people is life all about service. Maybe that's why the nun you're about to meet has been called the Mother Theresa of Los Angeles.

For more than twenty years, Sister Julia Mary Farley has been a mother of sorts to thousands of women who have been on the streets and come here for help. This is Good Shepherd Center just northwest of downtown Los Angeles and about a mile or so from Skid Row. It's a former convent where women can drop by for a shower and meal and hopefully stay to make a permanent transition to a normal life.

Sister Julia Mary Farley>> That's not easily done. Easily said, but not easily done. But people can do it if they have the will to do it. You can't force them to do it. But if they have the will to change, they can do it, but with help. Cathy has been with us for a number -- not a number of years. We've known her for a number of years. Pretty soon, she's going to be moving to an apartment.

Val Zavala>> Cathy is one of their success stories. She spent time in prison and lost custody of her children.

Cathy>> They helped me to get back my children from court, taught me how to be a mother, to talk, not to cuss. Then they taught me how to be a grandmother. I've learned a lot from her. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for this great woman. If she wouldn't have brought me in, gave me some love, gave me her time, I wouldn't be able to stand here today.

Sister Julia Mary Farley>> And, Val, this is Yolanda.

Val Zavala>> And then there's Yolanda who came to the shelter addicted.

Yolanda>> My disease was progressing in my alcohol and drugs, but God has changed me totally and the Sisters have helped me for a long time. Many years, you know, we go back.

Sister Julia Mary Farley>> If the woman has an addiction, let's say, alcohol, drugs or something, we can refer her to a place that helps her and then she can come to us. But she has to take care of the addiction first.

Val Zavala>> Today Yolanda has her own apartment. She volunteers at a clinic and preaches the gospel at a small church.

Sister Julia Mary Farley>> We take care of women regardless of ethnicity or religion. I mean, obviously, if you live in this house, you know there's a chapel. You don't have to use it, though. But there's nothing mandatory about religious observance for any of them. Each finds her way to God in her own way.

Val Zavala>> Sister Julia Mary can give these women a home because she came from such a loving one. She grew up in a Catholic family in Chicago on a block full of kids to play with where the boys would jump the freight trains and be home in time for dinner. She came to California with her family when she was eighteen.

Sister Julia Mary Farley> But I had in mind that maybe the Lord was calling me to a vocation and prayed over that and then met the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and asked to enter their community.

Val Zavala>> At first, she thought she would become a teacher.

Sister Julia Mary Farley>> When I was a Novice, this Novice Mistress said to me, "Why did you come?" I said, "To teach." She said, "Oh, no, you didn't come to teach." I said, "Oh, yes, I did." Then I realized that I probably shouldn't say that (laughter). She said, "No, you came to give your life to God, to serve His people. Then the community will help you to follow the way that's best to help." I said, "Well, that sounds good to me. All right." (laughter)

Val Zavala>> She got a Masters degree in public health from UCLA. Then in 1984, she helped found Good Shepherd Center.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Many times, homelessness is the final result of problems that go back to childhood.

Sister Julia Mary Farley>> I was talking to one woman and I don't know why I said this, but I said, "At our house, you had to eat everything on your plate." So she said, "Not me. I come home after school, nobody there. My mother was on drugs, so I just get a piece of bread or something and go back out on the streets and then be out on the streets." Well, I'll tell you about Lorraine. Lorraine is someone that we met through our outreach program, but she didn't necessarily want to come to our house.

Val Zavala>> Lorraine was only five when her father gave her a cigarette and a drink, but she managed to rebuild a life for herself with a job, husband, house and children. Then drugs poisoned the family and she ended up on the street. Sister Ann, who does outreach, would come looking for her.

Lorraine>> And she would look under that bench and she would say, "Come from under that bench." It was really amazing because she kept coming back. I wouldn't come to the program and she would bring me clothes that I just didn't like. So she finally started bringing me clothes I liked. If you bring me clothes that I like, I know you understand me a lot better.

When I came here, it was home. It was a place that I trusted and they accepted me for who I was and they kept on and kept on trying to help me. Now to my days, I realize that, with their help, I was able to endure a lot of things in my life. I just lost my son. I lost my mother, I lost one son and then I just lost one last month on the sixth.

Val Zavala>> How?

Lorraine>> Drive-by shootings and, you know, I wouldn't have known how to endure them things if it wasn't for this place. But they give you so much love and so much dignity.

Val Zavala>> The women who make it through the first stage at the emergency shelter make the next step a few blocks away at the Women's Village. I got a tour from Sister Julia Mary and some board members.

Sister Julia Mary Farley>> It's a beautiful building when you see the inside.

Val Zavala>> Inside this roomy new facility, women learn the basics of independent living like buying their own food.

June>> We each have our own refrigerator. We have a closet.

Val Zavala>> The bedrooms are simple, clean and comfortable, but mostly they're safe.

June>> And when you walked in one of these rooms, it was like I almost was in tears when I walked into my room. Just to see that you're safe, you're clean and you're cared for, you know in that moment, I think, that you're going to make it and that, God willing, something is there giving you energy. Now you believe. Now you believe, you know, that you will rebuild. You can rebuild your life.

Val Zavala>> There's an estimated ninety thousand homeless people on Los Angeles County streets, but there would be twenty thousand more if it weren't for the work of Good Shepherd Center. Still, they wish they had more room to help others.

>> "In actuality, there's no room right now at this particular place."

Val Zavala>> The good news is that Good Shepherd Center is expanding. There will be twenty-one more apartments.

Judy Call>> And we're going to do some job training and job experience because we're going to run a small retail bakery, the Village Bakery.

Val Zavala>> Will it be open to the public?

Judy Call>> Open to the public, right.

Val Zavala>> There's a lesson for other communities about letting homeless shelters into their neighborhoods. Sister Julia Mary remembers the resistance they had to overcome with the help of a persuasive pastor.

Sister Julia Mary Farley>> It was he who talked to certain parishioners that he knew had influence and said to them, you know, give it a chance. Let's give these people a chance. They did that and I think these parishioners to whom he spoke talked to others. As I mentioned, pretty soon, they were bringing people to our door to see if we could help them. "That's the Lord's plan, how we help each other."

>> "Yes, it is, Sister."

Val Zavala>> Sister Julia Mary is good at deflecting compliments, always crediting her staff and board, and she would certainly be embarrassed if she knew that they have dubbed her the Mother Theresa of Los Angeles.

Cathy>> And I could never express all the gratitude in my heart. She's been the only mother that I've ever had. She's a nun, but she's still my mother (laughter).

Val Zavala>> In 1990, the president named Good Shepherd Center one of the country's 1000 Points of Light. Today at age thirty-nine and holding, as she puts it, Sister Julia Mary is still shining and will continue to do so for as long as the good Lord gives her strength.

Their new facility should be finished by the end of the year and Sister Julia Mary plans to be there. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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