California summer camp for people with disabilities threatened by budget cuts

From The Press-Enterprise:

With the loss of $52,000 in funding from the cash-strapped state of California, Easter Seals Southern California has launched a fund drive to keep its weeklong summer camp for disabled people open in the San Bernardino Mountains.

The loss of money from the state Department of Developmental Disability Services may be temporary as California wades through budget problems, said Easter Seals Southern California Marketing and Communications Manager Marianne Tomich, but any restoration will not come in time to help with this year's camp, scheduled to begin Aug. 2.

Some 125 mentally and physically disabled people have registered for the camp, including 72 from Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The campers, many of whom have been attending each summer for a decade or more, participate in traditional mountain camp activities -- like boating, fishing and archery -- that are tailored to compensate for their disabilities.

To hold this year's camp, Tomich said, Easter Seals will need to raise at least $10,000 a week for the rest of the month and make a final decision by July 26 on whether to cancel the event.

"I'm doing everything I can to make it," Easter Seals Regional Vice President Debbie Ball said by phone this week. "We've got volunteers all over the country who are hitting up their friends and families for donations. The campers are out trying to raise funds. Everybody is pulling for us."

The camp costs about $125,000 to run, she said, with $65,000 of that in rent paid to the YMCA for the use of Camp Oakes near Lake Williams in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Campers who paid $500 each to attend in the past are being asked this year to pay $675. Some low-income people who were awarded "camperships" to attend free in the past are being charged $300 this year, Ball said.

The national organization has promised $29,000, but even with stepped-up fund drives, she must still raise $42,900.

It would be difficult to run a scaled-back camp, Tomich said.

"It's kind of a Catch 22, because when you rent the site, you are renting it for the total campership," she said. "You can't rent a smaller site. A lot of the people who attend have already paid. It would be hard to start cutting."

Ball said many campers have been attending for 20 to 30 years.

"It's a very important part of their life. To have to deny any of them that service is something I'm trying hard to avoid," she said.

Danny O'Connor, 34, of Riverside, who suffered brain damage and partial paralysis in a 1991 traffic accident, enrolled in the camp and has since taken a job as one of the camp counselors.

"If the camp is not there, I think it would be shattering," he said. "Up there you are not judged by your disability. I look forward to that camp all year long."

Mario A. Ramirez, 35, of Riverside, who has cerebral palsy, said he attended his first camp in 1988.

"My family was going through hard times," he said by phone. "My mom was just getting over the death of my uncle. She needed time alone, so she signed me up for the camp.

"I feel terrible about it," he said of the camp's financial problems.

"Before I went, I was a pretty hard case for my mom," Ramirez said. "Being around all that positive, good energy slowly changed me from a selfish person to a pretty decent, empathetic person."

If he couldn't go to camp, he said, "I would probably be bored and take out my frustrations on people who don't deserve it."