Boys & Girls Club still doing good work

TONY DODERO

Fifteen-year-old Ernesto Alvarez is a busy young man.

On any given weekday, he acts as a tutor and a mentor to nearly

200 young children, who are eager to learn and find new opportunities

that will help them break through generation-long cycles of poverty

and inadequate education.

“He is the keystone,” said a beaming Dan Monahan, the branch

director of the Westside Boys & Girls Club.

Monahan was showing me around the club in response to a column I

wrote several weeks back, in which I told about a visit to my barber,

Mark Miller.

Miller described how Costa Mesa’s Westside was in need of youth

facilities and mentors, and he bemoaned the changes to such

institutions as the Lions Club Fish Fry and the Westside Boys & Girls

Club, changes he didn’t see as for the better.

Warning to barbers: When you’re coming up with solutions to the

world’s problems, make sure the guy in the leather chair isn’t a

journalist.

What my barber friend had to say sparked a good bit of response

and at least one call from Mike Scheafer, whose dad, Shorty Scheafer,

was mentioned in the column as one of Miller’s youth baseball

coaches.

Scheafer, a former city councilman and a long-standing member of

the Lions Club, was distressed at how the Boys & Girls Club was being

portrayed by at least one letter writer, who suggested it was a gang

hangout.

So he invited me to visit the club and to see for myself.

That I did, and Ernesto was one of the first kids I got to see.

And I have to say that gang member was the furthest thing from my

mind in describing him and the other young kids bustling about the

club, which sits adjacent to Rea Elementary School on Hamilton

Street, just east of Placentia Avenue, in the heart of the Westside.

“I used to be a troublemaker,” admitted Ernesto, who’s been coming

to the club since he was in first grade. Now, Monahan says, he’s a

driving force within the club, and he knows all the kids by name.

“I like helping kids do their homework and stuff and working in

the snack bar,” he said. “I want to go to a college that will help me

become a teacher, lawyer and doctor.”

Another attendee of the club is 13-year-old Veronica Mercado, the

club’s youth of the year, who calls the club her second home.

Veronica’s goal is to be the first person in her family to earn a

college degree.

Stories like Ernesto’s and Veronica’s are music to the ears of

Monahan and Dean Moore, the executive director of the Boys & Girls

Club of the Harbor Area of Orange County.

“This is the prototypical Boys & Girls Club,” said Moore of the

Westside kids who attend. “This is where the need for a Boys & Girls

Club really came from, kids from disadvantaged homes. The bottom line

is, we are a neighborhood community.”

Monahan, affectionately known by the kids who attend the facility

as “Mr. Dan,” has been the director of the club for two years and has

been in the same line of work for 18.

“We have programs here; we don’t sit around and watch ‘Sponge Bob’

all day,” Monahan said. “We teach self-esteem. We talk college here.”

And that’s tough, he admits, when 80% of the children in the club

come from parents who don’t have a high school diploma, much less a

college degree.

“We have to break the cycle,” Monahan said.

Monahan scoffs at those who say the club is infested with gangs

and street thugs.

“Nothing bad happens here,” Monahan said. “I haven’t had one fight

since I’ve been here.”

The club is a haven for kids looking for something to do with the

idle time between when school ends and when their parents get home.

There are adult and teen tutors, and while my barber friend Mark

Miller was right that there is little in the way of sporting

activities, the club does have two pool tables, a pingpong table,

three foosball tables and a shuffleboard game.

In addition, there is a computer lab that is so popular that its

attendance has to be monitored and controlled.

Moore and Monahan, who attended Boys & Girls Clubs in their youth,

said they would like to have a gymnasium and to offer other sporting

activities, but they have to work with what they’ve got.

“The problem is, we have limited space to serve the children we

have now,” Moore said. “Our ultimate goal is to replace this Boys &

Girls Club with a more modern facility. We are in the real infancy

stages of developing a long-term plan.”

The Westside Boys & Girls Club, I learned, is the oldest branch in

Orange County, started back in 1941. This particular facility next to

Rea School was built in 1981, so it’s got some natural wear and tear.

Thus they are looking for more funding to find a new home.

“We need to get people like Mark [Miller, my barber] excited about

what we are doing,” Moore said. “What makes the Boys & Girls Club

work is adults who care about kids. We do it because we care about

children.”

* TONY DODERO is the editor.

He may be reached at (714) 966-4608 or by e-mail at

[email protected].