Hospital Program Carved a Niche for Youths

By FRED ALVAREZ

June 1, 1997 12 AM PT

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

CAMARILLO — For wood shop teacher Bill McMahon, it means the end of a long career teaching troubled kids to use their hands and their heads to transform blocks of wood into works of art.

Since the start of the year, he has watched as workers dismantled Camarillo State Hospital room by room, unit by unit.

Moving vans have come to dominate the narrow streets that crisscross the hospital campus. And all but 14 of the buildings have emptied out, with hundreds of patients scattered across the state as the hospital races toward closure.

With the hospital set to shut down at the end of this month, staff members are in the midst of a final, frantic push to move out the last 300 patients and mothball the old mental institution.

So now comes McMahon’s turn to say goodbye.

For 27 years, he has been a key member of Camarillo’s youth services program, the only project of its kind in the state that melds academics, psychiatry and vocational classes to serve youngsters plucked from a tangle of assorted troubles.

But this week, as most of the young patients start moving to a new home in Norwalk, that program starts winding to an end. The move signals the end of patient services at the state hospital, as the children’s program is the last group scheduled to leave Camarillo.

“They say they’re going to set aside this room for salvage,” said the 56-year-old Camarillo resident, surveying his old workshop where the sweet smell of freshly cut timber mixes with a fine sawdust snow.

“They don’t want to continue the program, and that’s unfortunate,” he added. “Most of these kids have not had a chance to work with their hands, to see a project through from start to finish. It’s a very rewarding process, and I think kids who have experienced it will really miss it.”

That’s not all they will miss.

Tucked into a remote corner of the hospital campus, the program has been a sanctuary for Southern California’s abused, abandoned and neglected children for more than four decades.

Thousands of youngsters--ages 7 to 17--have gone through the treatment center over the years, immersing themselves in its unique blend of traditional schooling, cutting-edge psychiatry and vocational training.

Some stay only weeks; others hang on for years. Most have failed in community programs such as foster care or group homes, their behavior over the top and spiraling out of control.

Many have been in trouble with the law, funneled to the program as a last-ditch alternative to hard-core lockup. Others come weighed down by family problems, seeking refuge from violent homes or neglectful parents.

Together these wayward children have found a home at Camarillo, nourished by a one-of-a-kind program geared toward helping them make their way in the outside world.

But come next week, all of that will change. By June 10, the last of 75 youngsters will have transferred to a new program at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk.

Despite a judge’s ruling that the hospital stay open until officials could assure that the remaining patients would not be harmed by being moved to other facilities, state officials now say most of those issues appear to be settled and should not interfere with any patient transfers.

The children’s center move has stirred plenty of questions, with the children wanting to know where they are going and what they will find once they get there.

Emotions are running high.

“This has been hard on them,” said Simi Valley resident Kathy Mulford, who supervises a unit of 12- to 15-year-old boys who will be the first to leave for Metropolitan on Monday.

“Camarillo has been their home,” she said. “It’s all they know. I certainly don’t think we are the be-all and end-all of children’s programs--there’s always room for improvement. But I think as far as they’re concerned, there will never be another Camarillo children’s unit.”

The program actually is broken into two components.

On the main hospital campus, there are two residential units for boys 15 to 17, as well as a specialized high school they are required to attend five days a week.

Set away from the campus is an area known as the children’s complex, complete with its own school, a gymnasium and an indoor swimming pool. The area is flanked by a row of red-brick residential units for boys 7 to 14 and girls 7 to 17.

Those units back right up to Camarillo’s back country. As a result, there is always plenty of wildlife around, including a 6-foot-long bull snake captured recently by Bill McMahon near his wood shop.

“Since it’s a bull snake, let’s call him Bullwinkle,” said one of the boys last week, touching the serpent’s scaly underbelly.

“A few days ago we fed him a bird,” another boy chimed in. “He ate it whole.”

The beauty of the children’s program, McMahon was quick to point out, is that there were always larger lessons going on. Even in wood shop, he said, there was more to learn than how to build a birdhouse or a shoe box.

“Many of our kids, who have a lot of behavior problems, haven’t been able to experience success in any area,” McMahon said. “That’s where we helped the most, allowing them to work with their hands and build something they could be proud of. It’s a kind of sad ending to a great program.”

In a courtyard outside Unit 70, the depth of that sorrow showed up on the walls last week. There, the girls covered nearly every square inch with colored chalk, scribbling anonymous messages and farewells.

“Unit 70 Rules,” one of the messages said. “We Will Miss U,” read another.

“These kids really grow on you,” said Anita Ramos, a Ventura County native who has worked at the hospital a total of 23 years, including the last seven as a psychiatric technician on a unit of girls ages 13 to 17.

Like a dozen staff members on her unit, Ramos has taken a job at Metropolitan and will accompany her girls when they leave.

“They kind of become like your own kids,” said Ramos, an Oxnard mother of three. “They’re so needy, and they think of you as a role model, even a mother at times.”

Oak View resident Dee Press can relate.

She retired in April of last year after 34 years at Camarillo, starting when she was 19 years old as a psychiatric technician in the children’s program and working her way into a teaching position at the hospital’s Mountain Valley School.

She said no job could have been more rewarding. Many of the children could barely read or write. Many had problems staying focused. All were a danger to themselves or others, exhibiting a bridled emotion and anger that were always threatening to run free.

“The kids typically before coming to the hospital had terrible experiences of failing miserably in all aspects of their lives,” Press said, recalling one time when a student flung a heavy oak chair across the room that barely missed her head.

“I loved all my kids,” she said. “But there was never a dull moment.”

Press is best known for bringing her golden retrievers to class with her, first Echo and then Echo II. By learning to care for the dogs, she said, the youngsters learned a lot about how to get along with each other.

The successes were small. But they were evident every day, in and out of class. Now Press worries how they will get along away from Camarillo.

“There are places they can go, but these kids are so demanding, they need so much,” she said. “I just hope they can be in a place where they have as many opportunities as we provided.”

At Metropolitan, staff members have been busy creating a new children’s program. Using six units at the front of that hospital, officials have developed a 120-bed program, complete with educational services provided by the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Though there is no pool or gym on site, the hospital is contracting with the city of Santa Fe Springs to provide recreational services. And while it’s true that the wood shop program is being scrapped, the hospital is creating a new vocational education program.

In addition, the hospital is developing new psychiatric programs, including a fellowship program with UCLA.

“It’s a very unique program,” said Dr. Michael Ichinaga, program assistant at Metropolitan. “What we have focused on is for them to have a very intensive treatment program while they are here.”

Ex-Marine Jim Miranda hopes that is true. But he worries anyway. Along with his wife, Sandi, the Moorpark resident started a group in 1990 called Marines & Friends 4 the Camarillo Kids, a nonprofit support group for the children’s program.

Over the years, the group has generated thousands of dollars in gifts for the youngsters, including a new playground set that sits behind the children’s complex.

And every other weekend, Miranda and other group members would visit the facility, hosting picnics and barbecues and softball games.

On Saturday, the group hosted it’s last party for the children, an ice cream social complete with good food and circus clowns.

“It’s a tragedy this place is going to be closed, I will believe that until the day I die,” said Miranda, known to the kids as Sgt. John. “I worry about the kids as they leave, that they might lose what they’ve gained here at Camarillo. If nothing else, I hope we’ve showed them there are people out there who care about them and who wanted to help.”

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About This Series

At the end of this month, one of the most famous institutions in Ventura County will wind to a close. “A Community Says Goodbye: The Closing Of Camarillo State Hospital” is an occasional series chronicling the final days of the mental hospital. This installment focuses on the closure of the hospital’s youth services program, the only project of its kind in the state for severely troubled youngsters.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Camarillo State Closure At the end of this month, a Ventura County landmark will empty out and shut its doors. Camarillo State Hospital has been a refuge for the mentally disabled since 1936, boasting a range of services unavailable at any other state facility. Today, with the hospital set to close June 30, fewer than 300 patients remain and only 14 units remain open. The map below chronicles the shut down of the state hospital sinc the closure was announced last January

Building Key

Units Still Open

12. Gero-Psychiatric/Skilled Nursing

18. Youth Services

19. Youth Services

41. Behavioral Learning/Sensory Development

47. Behavioral Learning/Sensory Development

51. Behavioral Learning/Sensory Development

58. Behavioral Learning/Sensory Development

61. Behavioral Learning/Sensory Development

70. Youth Services

72. Youth Services