Heartfelt Farewell : Youth Program Workers Prepare for Hospital’s Closure

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.

Movers’ 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 hospital system.

But this week, as most of the young patients start moving to a new hospital in Norwalk, that program starts winding to an end.

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

It’s unfortunate, he added. “Most of these kids have not had a chance . . . 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.”

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--age 7 to 17--have come through the treatment center, immersing themselves in its unique blend of traditional schooling, cutting-edge psychiatry and vocational training.

Some stay only weeks, others for years. Most have failed in community programs such as foster care or group homes, their behavior out of control.

Many have been in trouble with the law. Others come weighed down by family problems.

Together these children have been nourished by a program geared toward helping them make their way in the outside world.

But by June 10, the last of 75 youngsters will have transferred to a new program at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk.

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

“This has been hard on them,” said Kathy Mulford, who supervises a unit of 12- to 15-year-old boys.”Camarillo has been their home. It’s all they know.”

The program actually is broken into two components.

On the main hospital campus 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.

The beauty of the children’s program, McMahon said, was 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 . . . haven’t been able to experience success in any area,” McMahon said. “It’s a kind of sad ending to a great program.”

In a courtyard outside Unit 70, the girls have 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 for 23 years, including the last seven as a psychiatric technician.

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, a mother of three.

Dee Press can relate.

She retired in April of last year after 34 years at Camarillo, starting at age 19 as a psychiatric technician in the children’s program and working her way into a teaching position.

She said no job could have been more rewarding. Many of the children could barely read or write. Many had problems staying focused. All had bridled anger that was 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.

“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. 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.

Now Press worries how they will get along away from Camarillo.

“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 120-bed children’s program.

While 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 the wood shop program is being scrapped, the hospital is in the process of creating a new vocational education program.

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

Ex-Marine Jim Miranda and his wife Sandi started a group in 1990 called Marines & Friends 4 the Camarillo Kids, a nonprofit support group for the childrens’ program.

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

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

On Saturday, the group hosted its last party for the children, an ice cream social.

“It’s a tragedy this place is going to be closed. I will believe that until the day I die,” Miranda said. “If nothing else, I hope we’ve showed them there are people out there who care about them and who wanted to help.”