Volunteer Builders Make It a Labor of Love : Charity: John Torrence and Corazon--which means <i> heart</i> --can erect a small home in 1 day. If all goes well, another house will rise by 4 p.m. today in Tijuana.

By DAVID REYES

June 26, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

ORANGE — What began as a strange telephone call from a man seeking volunteers to build houses in Tijuana has turned into a lifelong commitment for John Torrence.

Torrence, a 34-year-old computer analyst from Orange, answered a “weird” phone call more than a decade ago.

“It was for someone else,” Torrence recalled. “This guy on the telephone said he was from some group called Corazon and they were going to Tijuana to build a house in one day. I remember saying it couldn’t be done. Weird. I went down because I thought they couldn’t do it, that it was a fluke.”

But they succeeded, and Torrence has been hooked ever since.

Today, more than 60 volunteers from Corazon, a private, nonprofit Orange County organization, will cross the U.S.-Mexico border at 6:30 a.m. in trucks carrying lumber, nails, linoleum and other building materials, Torrence said.

The caravan will make its way to Vista Encantada, one of Tijuana’s small neighborhoods of cardboard shanties, where a building site has been selected. There, Torrence, who is now president of Corazon, will supervise the building of a small, 12-by-20-foot house for a Mexican family.

Members of Corazon, which means heart in Spanish, have built more than 150 small houses since the group formed 21 years ago. Other group projects include scholarships, health clinics, and distribution of food and clothing in Baja, Torrence said.

“These are not big houses, but they do provide for protection from the wind, the sun and from bugs,” Torrence said. “You’re taking somebody who lived in a tar-paper shack with light peeking through. And, when you’re done, they have a nice, small place with a propane stove, ceramic tile counter, although there is no plumbing and no electricity.”

On the trips, volunteers cross the border in San Ysidro before 7 a.m. and usually finish construction by 4 p.m. Work is brisk, and each crew has a specific task, Torrence said. For example, as plywood is being unloaded by one crew, it is handed to another crew for painting. Instead of concrete foundations, they sink old telephone poles into the ground and bolt onto them huge flooring timbers. Then they nail on sheets of linoleum and raise the walls with traditional 2-by-4s covered with plywood.

“We’re a fast group,” Torrence said. “Walls are being built and walls are being painted almost at the same time. Windows, four of them, are being placed in the walls as they’re on the ground. We use a design that has evolved through the years.”

Families are selected based on need, he said. Usually, recipients are single mothers with several children. They must have title to the land to ensure that they can stay in the home. Torrence said the recipients are usually living in a flimsy shack with a dirt floor. Corazon looks for families for whom a new house will mean a new chance in life.

“Some families are very poor, but they may have a decent house,” he said. “With others, no matter what you do, it won’t help, as . . . with drug users or alcoholics. We’re looking for that one family, who with a new house, it will kick in something extra, that added oomph, they needed to make it in life.”

The family then becomes one of Corazon’s key resources in the community. “Then they help by becoming our mini-warehouses, a place where we can store donated items for distribution to others in the community. It doesn’t work all the time. But it works better than what was there before.”

Recently, Corazon volunteers built a house for a young mother who had been caring for a sick child after another of her children had died from exposure.

Torrence said Corazon is always in need of volunteer church or school groups to collect building materials, help load trucks, or are handy with a hammer.

Torrence said that volunteers put in a lot, but they get back something more valuable.

“They have tired and sore muscles . . . and a heightened perspective as to what is truly important in life, and what is not,” he said.

For more information, call Corazon at (714) 997-2384.