Give Los Angeles 2019: Presented by Los Angeles magazine

L O S

A N G E L E S

BRIAN GRAZER Producer, Author, Philanthropist

AGENTS OF CHANGE: Meet the People Who Are Building A Better L.A. How You Can Make a Difference

PRESENTED BY

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Contents 3 | GIVING IN LOS ANGELES

How we donate, by the numbers 4 | HELP WANTED

Inventive charities that need volunteers.

6 | HIGHER CONNECTIONS

Producer and philanthropist Brian Grazer on his hands-on approach to charitable giving.

14 | THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

The King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science brings a topgrade medical education to a low-income neighborhood.

22 | THE RENEGADE DOCTOR OF SKID ROW

Raised in privilege, Dr. Susan Partovi has spent her career tending to L.A.’s homeless and addicted.

28 | DRESSED TO THRILL

An annual event helps hundreds of teens in L.A.’s foster care system get dolled up for the most important night of the year.

30 | FAMILY TRIES

For those hoping to expand their household through L.A.’s fost-adopt program, the process can end either in happiness or heartache. Several SoCal families share their stories.

44 | L.A. MOMENT

Sascha Breuer grooms the homeless.

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF VESPA

Maer Roshan

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Rose DeMaria CONTRIBUTING DESIGNER Mary Franz MANAGING EDITOR Eric Mercado PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Denise Philibert ASSOCIATE EDITOR Tom Hicks CONTRIBUTING PHOTO EDITOR Richard Villani

Josef Vann

PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER DIRECTOR, CONTENT STRATEGY & SOLUTIONS

Mitch Getz DIRECTOR, STRATEGY & PARTNERSHIPS

Suzy Starling ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Caitlin Cullen INTEGRATED ACCOUNT DIRECTORS

Brittany Brombach, Samantha Greenfield, Dana Hess ADVERTISING SALES COORDINATOR

Nathaniel Perkins CREATIVE SERVICES ART DIRECTOR

Sheila Ramezani

Josef Vann PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER

2 L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA N G E L E S

For advertising inquiries, please contact Suzy Starling at: sstarling@lamag.com | 323-801-0082

H A L B E R G M A N /G E T T Y I M AG E S

L

OS ANGE LES is often described as 72 suburbs in search of a city. The insinuation is that this town is a broken tapestry of indifferent fiefdoms, though L.A. has proved again and again that a large metropolis can feel like a community and have a heart. Home to tens of thousands of nonprofit organizations, with a citizenry donating about $10 billion annually, the city consistently lands near the top of philanthropic lists. And one of Hollywood’s great benefactors, producer Brian Grazer, has been at the forefront of children’s issues for decades. In our fourth edition of GIVE Los Angeles, he talks about his numerous charitable endeavors. In fact, much of this issue is devoted to children, from the travails of foster care parenting to prom facilitators for disadvantaged kids to profiles of medical wunderkinds. We also feature a doctor whose skills provide much needed comfort to the homeless population of Skid Row. After reading these inspirational stories, check out our recommendations on where to volunteer. You’ll be glad you did.

» STORY BY ERIC MERCADO » GRAPHIC BY PETER HOEY

GIVING IN LOS ANGELES WE STACK UP NICELY COMPARED TO OTHER METROPOLITAN AREAS AROUND THE COUNTRY. FROM INNER-CITY GENEROSITY TO COLLEGIATE SUPPORT, WE FOLLOW THE MONEY

TEN LARGEST LOCAL GIFTS TO HIGHER EDUCATION (IN MILLIONS)

MOST GENEROUS PRIVATE FOUNDATIONS (ANNUAL DONATIONS)

$750 to CalTech (2019) from Stewart and Lynda Resnick $600 to CalTech (2001) from Gordon and Betty Moore $200 to Claremont McKenna College (2007) from Robert A. Day $200 to UCLA (2011) from Lincy Foundation $200 to UCLA School of Medicine (2001) from David Geffen $200 to USC (2016) from Lawrence Ellison $200 to USC (2011) from David and Dana Dornsife $175 to USC (2006) from Lucasfilm Foundation $150 to USC (2011) from W.M. Keck Foundation $112.5 to USC (1998) from Alfred E. Mann

4.7

AMOUNT DEDICATED BY THE CITY AND COUNTY TO FIGHT HOMELESSNESS OVER THE NEXT DECADE

California Community Foundation

$170 million

Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation

$158 million

The California Endowment

$156 million

Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

$112 million

Jewish Community Foundation

$78 million

LOS ANGELES Communities donating above the county average of 2.1% Communities donating below the county average of 2.1%

BILLION DOLLARS

Malibu

Pacific Palisades Crenshaw

ANNUAL AVERAGE INDIVIDUAL GIVING

L.A.

$6,098

Atlanta

$8,044

Boston

Watts

Manhattan Beach

$5,885

Washington, D.C. Philadelphia

Inglewood

$5,290 $4,430

L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA N G E L E S 3

HANDS-ON HELPING WRITE A CHECK? SURE. BUT MAKE TIME TO VOLUNTEER AT THESE INVENTIVE CHARITIES THAT EMPOWER AND IMPROVE

Y

OU T OSS E D S OM E

loose change into a Salvation Army bucket, and it felt good. Want to hang on to that natural high even longer?

Spend time assisting these worthwhile causes:

GROWG O OD

> Sustainability meets charity at this urban farm located at Bell Shelter, a homeless care facility.

Flex your green thumb and help feed those in need. If getting your hands dirty isn’t for you, GrowGood

is always looking for people to run outreach, provide program support, and help fundraise. 5600 Mansfield Way, Bell, grow-good.org FR E E ARTS

> Volunteers help put together events and workshops at this safe space where abused children can express themselves artistically.

Own a surplus of art supplies?

Check the wish list of items needed.

11099 S. La Cienega Blvd., Ste. 235, Westchester, freearts.org DOWNTOWN WOMEN’S CENTER

> Housing more than 210 homeless women and providing employment workshops and other services to roughly 4,000 women, the center is always in need of volunteers. Become a resident host or take part in a cooking club. 442 San Pedro St., downtown, downtownwomenscenter.org HOM E B OY I NDUST R I ES

> This nonprofit has become a local institution with its gang-prevention focus, offering counseling, legal help, tattoo removal, job training, and other assistance to help Angelenos shape their lives. 130 W. Bruno St., Chinatown, homeboyindustries.org FR I E NDS OF T H E L.A. R I V E R

> FoLAR hosts an annual L.A. River cleanup that has drawn 6,000 volunteers and filled 15 dumpsters.

If interacting with the public is your thing, become a docent and help with political advocacy, tours, and teaching children about the historic importance of this waterway. 570 W. Avenue 26, Cypress Park, folar.org PAWS/L.A.

ARTISTIC RELEASE Children participating in Paint Your Feelings, a Free Arts program

4 L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA N G E L E S

> The organization focuses on promoting human-animal bonds by helping elderly people and those with life-threatening disabilities care for their furry friends. Walk dogs, foster an animal, or deliver pet food. 2121 S. Flower St., downtown, pawsla.org

CO U R T E SY F R E E A R TS

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PHILANTHROPY

» STORY BY MAER ROSHAN » PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF VESPA

THE LIFE OF BRIAN THE SUPER PRODUCER AND PHILANTHROPIST ON GIVING LOCAL, LAYING BRICKS IN AFRICA, AND THAT FAMOUS MOP OF HAIR

P

RODUCE R BRIAN GRAZE R

has enjoyed what is, by any measure, a spectacularly successful career. Over the course of 35 years, he has garnered a handful of Emmys, won an Oscar, penned a New York Times best-seller, and found his way (twice) onto Time’s 100 Most Influential People List. In his recent book, Face to Face: The Art of Human Connection, Grazer credits what is perhaps an unlikely source for his success: the personal connections he has formed throughout a career in Hollywood. On a recent visit to his Santa Monica home, we talked about his extensive philanthropic interests in Los Angeles and beyond; why he prefers to support causes close to home; his partnership with his wife, Veronica; and how not having a beard shaped his professional persona.

L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA N G E L E S 7

ments. I produced A Beautiful Mind because I saw people all over yelling at garbage cans, screaming at walls. My own son, who went to Malibu High, was teased mercilessly when he was younger. Just coping with even the most minor disability is hard, but places like this make it easier. I can’t tell you how many friends of mine have children with autism, and they can not find any place to take care of them. There’s a huge waiting list that all the money in the world won’t help you crack.

Is your son autistic? > He has Asperger’s syndrome, so it’s not

A FAMILY AFFAIR Brian Grazer with wife, Veronica, and three of his kids at a World of Children benefit in L.A.

so serious. But he’s certainly faced the stigma of being different for most of his life. I want the world to not punish people that have disabilities. So we support this place that helps destigmatize mental disability and lets kids socialize with one another and go on outings and find a job.

My son has a job as a bagger at Whole Foods now, which is a big step. It’s hard to find places like this for adults. So I give to things that have personal meaning to me. It’s hard for me to contribute to causes that are more abstract or too far away. I’m not rich enough to give to vague causes. I like to keep it local.

Are there local institutions that you think are particularly important to support? > One of the most important things I’m involved with is USC film school, where I am a board member. I’ve been on the board with Steven [Spielberg] and George Lucas and a few others almost since its inception—probably around 20 years. I make contributions and I teach there.

What do you teach? > Anything the dean orders me to.

(Laughs.) Last year I taught a class to the graduate students called Starting from Zero. It’s about actualizing everything that you learned into a job. Because a lot of these kids, they don’t all have rich parents. They’re on grants or scholarships. They need to get working quickly.

They can’t all take unpaid internships.

One lesson I am really proud of is called “How to Make the Most of a Serendipitous Moment.” And it came out of a conversation I frequently have with my wife, [Veronica]. Whenever we go out to dinner, every time that Veronica goes to the ladies’ room, someone approaches me with a screenplay idea or pitches their movie or whatever. And they have 15 minutes to make their pitch. Some of them are great; some of them are awful.

But the idea was—if you have 15 minutes to get someone hooked, here is how you do it.

I know you were also very involved with LACMA for a while.

R I C H P O L K /G E T T Y I M AG E S FO R WO R L D O F C H I L D R E N

Your book is about the power of personal connection. How does that idea inform your philanthropy and the charities you like to give to?

BRIAN GRAZER: I guess I like to give to things that I can see, feel, and touch. If I can’t see, feel, or touch it, then it’s harder for me to get involved. So I became involved with Best Buddies because its impact was very tangible to me. I’m very active in a residence called Casa de Amma, where my oldest son, Riley, is living. It’s an assisted-living facility in Laguna Beach for people with autism. You have relatively high-functioning kids living in their own apart-

R I C H P O L K /G E T T Y I M AG E S FO R WO R L D O F C H I L D R E N

> I was on the board of LACMA for a long time. It was a great experience because I really believe in [LACMA director] Michael Govan. When he first joined LACMA, it seemed like a vacant lot—a building but with all vacancies.

And I saw him transform that, even in its earliest stages, to a bustling worldclass museum that matters to people. I think people are a key component of the causes I am attracted to. You want leaders that are efficient and effective and visionary, and Michael is all three.

He has this kind of gravitational force that makes me want to participate or do what he wants to do. I left the board a couple of years ago, but my enthusiasm for Michael is undiminished.

TV STARS Grazer with legendary producer Norman Lear at a charity event in Beverly Hills last year

You’re involved with a group called World of Children. fearless adventurer; we have gone to a > That and also WE Villages. It’s this lot of places together, like Senegal and fantastic organization that builds Mali. Other places, like Yemen and schools in rural areas of countries in Afghanistan, I am too scared to follow Asia and Africa. Sheryl Sandberg and him. But Burma really moved me. We Bobby Kotick turned us on to it. The went to a couple of orphanages that he organization basically trains volunteers brought to our attention. And I gave to of all kinds to work together on projects them because I saw the dire conditions that improve society. Every year they they were living in. have an event called WeDay where volunteers from That seems to go around the word lisagainst your rule ten to speakers like of only giving to Oprah and Selena things that are “[MY SON HAS] Gomez. We became close and personal.

FACED THE very taken by that. > Yeah, but I saw and Under their auspices felt and touched STIGMA OF BEING we have gone to these people. I talked DIFFERENT FOR Udaipur, [India]; to them, and I could MOST OF HIS Burma; Kenya; sense their crisis, LIFE. I WANT THE South Africa; and and I did it just WORLD TO NOT Israel. And in each impulsively.

PUNISH PEOPLE place we have made sure to visit an Do you usually THAT HAVE orphanage or visit bring your children DISABILITIES.” with the needy. on these trips?

Burma especially > Yes. We take all of has been a wondrous our four kids and place to visit. We’ve sometimes even our traveled there three times in a year. nephews and nieces and their friends.

Our first trip was to Israel. Since then Why Burma? we’ve been to all these far-flung places > Tom Freston, who’s the chairman of where we get involved in building the the (RED) organization with Bono, had schools for WE Villages or housing for first suggested we go there. Tom is a people who literally have nothing.

They’re for people that make like $5 a week. They live in little villages, sometimes in these mud huts that look like tiny brown igloos. Getting to these places is always an adventure. On the last one we spent hours driving on a bumpy dirt road in the middle of nowhere, miles away from the closest city. It was nighttime. There wasn’t a single light in the street, and we’re speeding through these little mountain villages to get there.

And what do you do when you arrive? > We do whatever we’re asked to do.

In this case we were asked to help build a school.

Physically? > I don’t want to overstate things, like we built an entire school. (Laughs.) But the experience certainly exposed all of us to the mission and the grueling work of laying bricks.

You literally were laying bricks? > We were literally laying bricks.

I would pay good money to see that.

(Laughs.) > I’m sure we have pictures of it. But, yeah, I was literally laying bricks. What you do is, there’s a foundation, and then you lay bricks on top of cement, and you have that little thing that makes it even.

It’s like a scraper. I don’t love doing it,

L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA N G E L E S 9

ed and empowered women in Africa who were diagnosed with HIV. So many women with HIV don’t realize that they can take a pill and prevent themselves from passing the virus to their children. Mother2Mothers [educates], and it helps take care of women who’ve been exiled for being HIV positive. It’s a great organization, and it’s run by a world-famous doctor who happens to be married to Annie Lennox.

What other causes are you into? > We do a lot of stuff with the homeless, and we are both very interested in the environment [and] Jewish and Christian groups. We actually donate a lot of money to St. Monica church, which Veronica is very taken with.

but ... I’m trying to be a good role model.

Also, being exposed to stuff gives you a deeper perspective. Both Veronica and I are grateful for the lives we have been able to lead, for our families, and for good health. Health is really important, because I see a lot of our friends that were very powerful, and as esteemed or talented as they are, some are plagued with physical problems.

I had a friend, Jerry Perenchio, who donated incredible amounts of money to medical school, to everybody—everybody and everything. He bought the Beverly Hillbillies house, spent about a billion dollars on it. He just lived the most amazing life. He was my mentor.

He died of cancer.

Was he young? > No, he wasn’t young. He was like 76, maybe 78. But his health was always a problem for him, despite all the money and, you know, Pavarotti singing at his wedding and Andy Williams singing “Moon River” at his chateau in Bel-Air. He had everything. He was the greatest curator of human beings. He’s the producer who promoted the Fight of the Century, the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight. He sold Univision for $13 billion and made $9 billion personally.

10 L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA NG E L E S

Tell me about that. Why that church?

Because Veronica came to L.A., and within a week we met—crazily. And as you know she’s a devout Catholic and an He just did great things. all-round spiritual person. So she was looking for a church, and one day she What happened? found St. Monica. She always wanted > About 20 or 25 years ago, he was laid me to go to church. I said no because up on his back for an entire year. And he religion is a choice. And eventually I met said, “I’d trade everything for good her monsignor. His health.” So the next name is Monsignor day I thought, “Wow, Lloyd Torgerson. that’s heavy.” I went And I liked him so out in my backyard “I TRY TO STAY much. I grew up at the beach. On the with both faiths: a beach alone I had a HUMBLE AND Catholic dad and a couple of hits of pot ACCESSIBLE Jewish mom. I had and thought, “I don’t AND OPEN a Jewish grandhave to trade everyTO PEOPLE. mother who was a thing in the way JerI DON'T HIDE very strong influry’s saying it because OUT IN SOME ence. But my dad I have good health, I SORT OF sort of made me go have the thing he to catechism classes. wants so badly. So PRIVILEGED I found them really I’m not going to take COCOON.” scary. It was all that for granted. I’m about institutionaljust going to be super izing fear when I grateful every single went. In Judaism day that I am healthy things were different. It was funnier. and not sick.”

The Jews are funny; the Jews are funny, and I’m a funny Jew, sort of. And I Are you interested in medical charities? made a lot of money being a funny > Not hospitals so much, but the World of Jew, you know. So I grew up with both Children does a ton of health stuff, and things. And so once I escaped being Veronica was really active in a group hypnotized by that fear institution, I called Mothers2Mothers, which educat-

P R E S L E Y A N N /G E T T Y I M AG E S

OUR GANG (From left) Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Bob Iger, Rabbi Marvin Hier and Brian Grazer at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s National Tribute Dinner in April at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills

thought, “I’m not going back to that.”

But then I met this Monsignor Lloyd Torgerson, who’s a very open- minded. ... He’s quite liberal. And I liked him so much that I ... like the church, and I like what they stand for.

Your interest in Christianity developed rather late in life. > Really late in my life—it basically happened in the last five years.

How has it changed you? > It makes me more grateful. You know I’m already pretty grateful, but it just makes me more aware and appreciative of all the little things in the world. When I went to Israel, I began to see my Judaism in a different way—the religious aspects of it that I was not really exposed to before then. I had my hand on the Wailing Wall; trying to understand my own conflicts of faith. And so when you have spiritual experiences like that, it makes you think about things more deeply. I live a life with a lot of experiences that I like to reflect upon, and it helps to have a religious mentor. It’s another channel for reflection.

Do you still feel connected to Judaism? > Yes—by having gone to Israel. ...

Recently I became more connected to Judaism. But neither Judaism nor Christianity were foisted upon me. I mean I carried the cross [in Israel] because the monsignor was there for a couple of days. And my Jewish guide, Avi, was shocked. “Why would you carry the cross,” he said. “What are you doing now?” That kind of thing. I said, “I’ll do it.” And I did it. That was OK. But at the same time I became much more connected to my Judaism as well. I was honored by the Museum of Tolerance recently and won some Jewish award, and I was really moved by that honor.

And in the same way that I love and respect the monsignor, I also love and respect Rabbi Marvin Hier, who leads that museum. He’s even counseled me once in a while. I’ve gone to his house on Shabbat, and it’s always joyful. Once I asked him why Jews are so funny. He’s always laughing.

What did he answer? > He’s got good answers. Like, “Why? Because we’ve been tortured our whole lives. We’re trying to survive.” ... I just ...

Jews are funny. In the 17 years of making hit comedies, I always paired Jewish writers with goyim actors. Never Jew on Jew; never goy on goy. Always Jew on Tom Hanks. Jew on Steve Martin.

Jew on Eddie [Murphy]. (Laughs.)

In your new book you write that personal interaction has enabled many of the great social and cultural changes of our time. To what extent does that play out in your day-to-day life? > I try to stay humble and accessible and open to people. I don’t hide out in some sort of privileged cocoon. Bob Iger is the same way. He makes all his own calls for example. He doesn’t go through all the drama of having an assistant call someone and then make them wait for him on the phone. I have always thought that there’s sort of a dick-size element to many of the customs in this town. Yeah, there’s kind of a dick-size thing in Hollywood, but that’s of no concern to me. I don’t suffer in that department, let’s put it that way. (Laughs.)

There’s a book about philanthropy that recently came out, and it’s making lots of waves. It’s called Winners Take All. The idea behind it is that the way we do charitable giving is designed for rich people to look good, but that takes away from the change that society needs, that the government should be doing. It makes everyone dependent on money from wealthy people because they can control the dialogue and discourse. > I haven’t read the book, but I think there’s some truth to this premise.

How much of the charity that people give in Hollywood is driven by what other people are going to see? If people could no longer get their names on buildings and plaques, do you think donations would dip precipitously? > Well I think they would take a plunge, but that’s true everywhere I think not just Hollywood. People here are not the

Grazer’s new book book, a follow follow-up up to the best-selling A Curious Mind, examines the life-changing power of personal connections in a tech-obsessed world

only ones who suffer from vanity and ego. But that desire for status and showing up your peers does seem more pronounced in segments of the entertainment industry. I’ve been doing this for over 35 years. I have no idea how I’ve survived and succeeded within this very opaque system of power dynamics that are indiscernible. Quite frankly I just try to do the right thing. I don’t know how other people look at it. Honestly I think the most powerful people do it right. Bob Iger places his own calls, certainly to me and I to him. And I know that he picks up his own pizza from Milo & Olive and brings it to his house. He and I are extremely close friends. I know that’s how he operates in life, with total respect toward everybody, but if someone violates that respect, then his personality metamorphosizes.

Does that make him unusual? It’s not the traditional idea of a Hollywood mogul. > He is unusual that way. But I find that other powerful people are also like that in varying degrees.

Despite the long-standing tradition of screaming at assistants? > You know, who does that stuff? Usually guys with beards do it. (Laughs.) Unfortunately I couldn’t grow a beard so I had to try a different technique. I happened into a hairdo that was like a beard.

L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA N G E L E S 11

DYNAMIC DUO Brian Grazer and his wife, Veronica, at the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho

But I read somewhere that your hair was a smart way for you to get attention.

I thought that was kind of brilliant. > So as I sort of began ascending as a producer, there were three or four other powerful producers, but they all had beards and yelled at their assistants.

Who are these bearded, angry people? > (Laughs.) I’m not saying. But it’s just usually the action guys, and I wasn’t an action guy. For the first 17 years, I only wrote and produced comedies, beginning with Night Shift and then Splash and Parenthood and Nutty Professor and Liar Liar and Housesitter and Kindergarten Cop. I just did comedies. And then there was this sort of threshold moment because I was lucky enough to get [Oscar] nominated as one of the writers of Splash. But I came to a conclusion that you just cannot get respect doing comedies, no matter how good they are.

You talk a lot in your book about the importance of mentoring people. Was there someone who was particularly involved in mentoring you early on? > Many people, actually. But someone I will always remember fondly was

12 L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA NG E L E S

Deanne Barkley, who mentored me when I was 22 or 23 years old. She ran NBC at the time; she was theoretically the most powerful woman in the media business. She was best friends with Robert Stigwood and Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, some people sadly that died of AIDS, but this whole power echelon. She was a very smart, quick thinker, and incredibly generous. She took me on as a special project.

Did she offer you lots of sage advice? > (Laughs.) She once said, “You’re going to need a nickname.” I go, “What do you mean?” She goes, “Well, like there’s Swifty Lazar.” Swifty Lazar, as a nickname. And then she started giving me a few Hollywood nicknames, but none of them quite did the trick.

What were they? > I can’t remember most of them. But she once advised me, “Call yourself Shorty Grazer.” I said, “I am not calling myself Shorty Grazer. Forget it.” But it stuck in my mind that you needed to have an iconic identity. I could not grow a beard like my peers, so that was out. So I just happened into this really high hairdo, really high spikes, and I found that it was a lit-

That’s not your demo, I take it. > I want to be taken seriously by artists, the people who create the stories, who make the stories, who act in the stories.

And I thought they’ll appreciate the originality. And so I just made this right turn as opposed to the left turn. But I thought about it. He wasn’t wrong, but it was for the demo that appealed to him. [Recently] I was on my friend David Geffen’s boat. I’ve known him for 40 years—since I was a law clerk. He’s always been incredibly kind and supportive. And he actually accelerated my career. I had produced this movie called Night Shift, and it wasn’t a hit. But he stood up in a field of 500 people and clapped his hands and said, “This is brilliant,” in front of Bob Daly and Terry Semel, the entire brass. “This is amazing.”

And they all, just like a movie, they all chimed in and said, “Great work.” And it really validated me.

And so now, 40 years later, he said, “Your hair looks so much better when you pop out of the water, and it’s sort of flatter and stuff.” And I thought, “I don’t know, maybe he’s right.” And so a week later, I was at the San Pietro hotel with Veronica, and I got my hair cut. And I couldn’t chop it all the way, but I did conform in some ways to his instinct.

Well, it’s like Samson. Now that it’s kind of cut off, do you think maybe you’ll be less creative and less fabulous? > (Laughs.) I guess only time will tell.

D R E W A N G E R E R /G E T T Y I M AG E S

mus test. So when I met anybody, they either thought, “What an asshole for having hair like this,” or they thought, “Hey that’s pretty cool and original.”

Most people just thought: “Why are you doing that?” They’re just curious about it. But there were people that thought: “What an asshole.” It all came to a head later through Michael Ovitz, who was my agent. He was the most powerful person in all the media business. He said, “Listen, you’re very successful.

You’re not going to be taken seriously with that hairdo.” And I thought, “Taken seriously by whom?” And I thought, well, I guess he must mean he and other agents and businesspeople.

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E D U C AT I O N

» STORY BY CHRIS NICHOLS » PHOTOGRAPHS BY ASHLEY SKY WALKER

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT THE KING/DREW MAGNET HIGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND SCIENCE BRINGS A TOP-GRADE MEDICAL EDUCATION TO A LOW-INCOME NEIGHBORHOOD

S

EV E N T E E N Y EARS AF T E R

the Watts riots, a group of civic and religious leaders responded to the lack of educational and employment opportunities in the neighborhood by creating a small magnet school with a few bungalows for 60 students on a shared high school campus. Today the King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science has a curvilinear campus that’s adjacent to Charles Drew University and a new Martin Luther King hospital.

The school has about 1,600 students—that’s half the population of a typical L.A. high school—and girls outrank boys by a seven-to-one ratio. It has a 99 percent graduation rate. Ninety percent of those graduates end up going to college (Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, etc.), and King/Drew is one of the city’s major feeder schools for sending African American students to UCLA. The success of the magnet inspired the Los Angeles Unified School District to dedicate $750,000 to get going on a clone campus. Students in their junior year are sent on weekly visits to five area clinics: the Ronald Reagan Medical Center at UCLA, Veterans Affairs Hospital, Watts Health Center, Martin Luther King Jr. Outpatient Center, and downtown’s VA ambulatory care center.

We spoke to eight students to find out what draws them to medicine.

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ALEXEI OLIVO CARDIOLOGY > I want to become a cardiologist because I have a cardiologist myself: I was diagnosed with a heart murmur, and my doctor motivates me. The people in my community motivate me because I know this community can be better.

I grew up here. I have two older sisters. One wanted to work in medicine, but both had to drop out of college because of family problems. Compton is very vicious. Living here is a journey itself. In my neighborhood there have been drive-bys and gang shootings. All that made me more cautious about the choices in my life and made me want to do better.

MARIFER MAGAÑA NEUROSURGERY > Every Tuesday I go to the ambulatory surgery unit at UCLA, and if I’m lucky, I get to see a procedure. There were residents that found it weird that I was a high school student, and I was watching the same thing they were. I don’t find regular high school things interesting. I’m not into sports and stuff like that. I want to focus myself on medicine. I want to achieve something in life to prove that kids from Compton won’t all grow up to be in gangs. I want to be a doctor so I can give Compton a different name.

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NYLA MODELISTE FORENSIC TOXICOLOGY > King/Drew is pretty much like any other high school, but the teachers have higher expectations and train us to be prepared for college. I grew up with science and math because my dad trained me to understand that you have to use it in the real world, whether you’re eating or paying taxes. He told me that math and science are the key to life. I’m going to be a forensic toxicologist. I woke up in the middle of the night and my dad was watching Forensic Files. It’s real interesting how people figure out all these things by analyzing one little clue.

W I N T E R 2 0 16 | G I V E L O S AM NAG G E .LCEOSM| 17 LA 17

CHUKWUDI IWU EMERGENCY MEDICINE > I’ve been attracted to medicine since the fifth grade, when my mom was in a car accident and broke her leg. All I had was a busted lip, but they wanted me to come with her in the ambulance. It was very scary because I didn’t know what was happening. Now that I look back on it, it made me want to help people.

I want to become an ER specialist. A 9-to-5 job doesn’t interest me. I’d like to do something where I’m always on my feet and doing something. The ER is really hectic and, yes, it seems scary, but if you know how to handle things, you can save people.

NAYELI LOPEZ ORTHODONTICS > We had to research careers when I was in middle school, and I got really interested in orthodontics, particularly in the amount of money that orthodontists make. I volunteered at the Watts Health Center and shadowed the dentist. I watched them fill cavities and liked it. I wish I’d seen something gross—it would have been better for learning. My mom suffered a lot because she came here alone, spoke no English, and had to work at a young age to help her mom back in Mexico.

I saw her pain and her desperation.

I want to buy her a house and make sure that she never has to work again.

W I N T E R 2 0 16 | G I V E L O S A N G E L E S |

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ELIZABETH ORKEH ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY > My mom is a nurse, and my dad is a doctor.

My aunts in Nigeria are nurses. Most of the African American students here are first generation like me. My dad used to work for the World Health Organization, but when he came here he had to take odd jobs because he couldn’t practice medicine in the U.S. I have a lot more opportunities than my parents did. I used to play a surgery simulator called Edheads back in fifth grade. Then I started watching small surgeries on YouTube, and that showed me how it was done in real life.

It was so messy but also really cool.

PRIYA BHAVSAR ONCOLOGY AND HEMATOLOGY > I’ve been interested in medicine my whole life. My grandfather got diagnosed with diabetes, and I would make sure he got his meds on time. My parents speak an Indian language called Gujarati, and I was the only one in my family who knew enough English to talk to the doctors. I plan to become a pediatric oncologist and hematologist. My dad has leukemia, and so I was familiar with that subspecialty. I volunteer at the neonatal ICU. I saw the trauma team help a baby with a pulmonary hemorrhage. I felt the rush of adrenaline and tried to help the docs as much as I could.

SHAKIRAH WILLIAMS ANESTHESIOLOGY > My mom is a traffic officer, and my dad’s a barber, so I’ll be the first generation to go to college. When I came here for orientation I was amazed. Not a lot of schools have these opportunities, especially in this area. You go to Torrance and you see all those big houses with lawns and good restaurants. We’re surrounded

by Burger King and McDonald’s, and that’s bad for your health. We have a mannequin to practice phlebotomy; we have a pregnant mannequin; there’s even one with a foot injury. Not a lot of schools have that type of equipment.

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H E A LT H C A R E

» STORY BY JASON MCGAHAN » PHOTOGRAPHS BY BEN DUGGAN

THE RENEGADE DOCTOR OF SKID ROW RAISED IN PRIVILEGE, DR. SUSAN PARTOVI HAS SPENT HER CAREER TENDING TO L.A.’S HOMELESS AND ADDICTED

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R. SUSAN PART OV I is not supposed to drive patients to the emergency room, but it happens. The “Skid Row Doctor,” as colleagues know her, has an award in her office praising the “boundless compassion” she has demonstrated over what is now nearly 15 years of caring for thousands of the sickest of the sick in the homeless capital of America. Sometimes, however, Partovi’s boundless compassion gets her in trouble. ¶ It was late on a Thursday in February, one of those deceptively gray winter days in Los Angeles that turn sunny and hot in an instant. Partovi and a homeless man with a heroin addiction were in the front seat of her Toyota RAV4, speeding southward on the 110 freeway, destined for the UCLA-Harbor Medical Center in Torrance. ¶ A short time earlier, the patient, Melvin (who gave me permission to use his first name), had broken down sobbing in Partovi’s office, holding up a left hand freshly wrapped in a surgical bandage and crying out in pain that he couldn’t move his fingers. He was a patient of hers who lives out of a wheeled suitcase and sleeps at night on a sidewalk down the street from the free clinic where Partovi is the medical director. ¶ Using shears to gently cut away the dressing from the back of Melvin’s hand, Partovi saw four incisions packed with gauze that told her surgeons had operated to treat a deep infection. The degree of swelling was normal, but the unbearable pain he complained of made her fear that pressure was building within the muscles, which could decrease blood flow and prevent oxygen from reaching nerve and muscle cells. She feared that without treatment there was a chance Melvin could lose the hand. For Partovi it was a case study that encapsulated much of what she strongly disapproves of when it comes to the way mainstream doctors treat patients who inject drugs. ¶ Partovi worked as an attending physician in the family medicine department at Harbor for ten years. She knew the

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hospital staff usually doesn’t give medicine to patients to control the symptoms of heroin withdrawal. “To me it’s kind of cruel,” she says. She strongly suspected this was the reason why the patient left the hospital against medical advice so quickly after surgery. She had seen so many addicts do the same. “They’d rather leave a hospital with their hand hanging off than be dope sick,” she says.

Partovi jokingly refers to herself as “the abscess queen.” She has a video up on YouTube in which she slices open and squeezes an abscess the size of a grapefruit on a man’s rear end. Most of the wounds she treats at the nonprofit Homeless Health Care Los Angeles clinic start as soft-tissue infections of patients who slam drugs like crystal meth or the low-grade tar heroin sold to desperate addicts on Skid Row. Partovi had the presence of mind to use the drive-thru at McDonald’s before she got on the freeway. She ordered a Quarter Pounder with bacon and cheese and a side of fries for Melvin and a Shamrock shake for herself. As she merged at the interchange, he stared out the window, absently eating fries from the take-out bag.

With the freeway sign for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum approaching in the distance, Partovi phoned ahead to the attending physician on duty in the department of family medicine at Harbor. Family medicine, she said, does better at dealing with social situations and seeing the whole picture. She needed someone in family medicine to attend to Melvin. The operator put her on hold.

Alan O’Day’s “Undercover Angel” was playing on the radio, and Partovi sang along softly to the part of the chorus that goes, “Love me, love me, love me.”

The young woman on duty who answered the phone knew Partovi from a community medicine rotation the two had done at a needle exchange program.

“It’s supposed to go to plastics, but this is not the usual thing,” Partovi was saying, and the young doctor seemed to agree.

She told Partovi to call the attending physician on duty in the emergency department. The chipper young man who answered the phone there said he would see what he could do. “You’re going way out of your way,” Melvin said, sounding

as if he had come out of a trance. “Just be sure to check in,” she said.

With light traffic, we’d be at Harbor in 20 minutes. Beyond Birth and Death, a slim volume by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, was sticking out of the passenger seat’s back pocket. Partovi took a long sip on the straw of her shake and emitted a sound like mild shock. “I think I just gave myself diabetes,” she said.

F

ROM T H E ST R E ET , the Skid Row needle exchange of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles has the discreet charm of a cannabis dispensary. Its frontage is all tinted glass, featuring a large cartoonlike illustration of a syringe, and there’s a security guard who unlocks the front door and admits visitors one at a time. But the interior decor is almost industrial chic, like a tech start-up or an architecture firm: spacious with high ceilings, whitewashed brick, and lots of repurposed metal.

The door of Partovi’s office was open, and the clack-tap noise that broke up the businesslike hush of the exchange was coming from the heels of her black cowboy boots striking the concrete floor. Partovi was scouring the room for something, which she found in a narrow space on the floor between the desk and a filing cabinet. “Aha!” she said jubilantly, retrieving a small pouch made from what appeared to be Alpaca wool, pinkdyed and hand-knit, the sort of thing one might find at a village market in the Andes. Partovi has high, arched eyebrows, freckled cheeks, a fine elongated nose, and dark eyes whose heavy lids she had striped with royal-blue eye shadow to match her turquoise earrings.

The pouch, as she affably demonstrated, is a size that fits snugly around her travel mug of tea (“I can’t even handle coffee”). It has a long cross-body strap that lets the cup dangle at her waist and keeps her hands free. Useful to have, she said, since the temperature outside was in the 40s and we were going out for a walk.

Partovi is the kind of doctor who wears a jean jacket, not a white coat, car-

STREET SMART Dr. Susan Partovi launched successful homeless treatment programs in Venice and Skid Row

ries her medical gear in a backpack, and makes home visits to patients who reside outdoors. She has pioneered the practice of street medicine in Los Angeles, having created successful programs for the homeless in Venice and Skid Row that became models for today’s multiagency mobile outreach teams that are run collaboratively by the city and Los Angeles County.

But today Partovi wasn’t carrying her usual backpack, which bears the basics like foot cream, socks, Band-Aids, and antibiotics, and even collars and leashes for dogs. She doesn’t do outreach on Skid Row like she used to. She directs a clinic here once a week. It’s more of a wound care clinic for heroin addicts, run by

Homeless Health Care Los Angeles. It provides sterilized hypodermic needles to people who inject drugs and prescribes medication and treatment for those who wish to stop. Her patients are the lepers of the American public health system, dually stigmatized for homelessness and addiction, for whom illness is inextricable from shame, and they adore her because she treats them without judgment.

Partovi lives in a two-bedroom bungalow in Venice with several dogs, two of which—Cookie and Ray Ray—she adopted from Skid Row. She took Cookie in after the white terrier mix was hit by a car and paralyzed at the waist. Partovi paid thousands of dollars for operations, had one rear leg amputated, a metal rod

L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA N G E L E S 23

Mexico. She met a physician’s assistant inserted in the other, and put the dog in in the group and went with him to prodiapers for a month until she recovered vide medical care to children in a poor and could walk again. Partovi once took village on a hill that overlooked a city in nine cats as a condition for a homeless dump. She remembers the children were woman to enter treatment for cancer. barefoot, filthy, and suffering illnesses The patient later died of her illness, and like leprosy that stemmed from overPartovi kept the pets at home for two whelming poverty and medical neglect. years. “How you doing, lady doctor?”

After graduating from Santa Monica asked a man running past with a blanket High School, she was accepted to UCLA draped behind him like a cape. and then enrolled at the Sidney Kimmel Partovi’s path to homeless medicine Medical College at Thomas Jefferson had an unlikely start in Brentwood and, University in Philadelphia. later, Malibu, where she grew up the She stopped calling herself a Christian daughter of prosperous Jewish-Iranian after medical school because of a falling parents. Her father, an aerospace engiout with the religion based on what she neer, immigrated to Los Angeles in the calls intolerance. She has since forgotten 1960s, earned his master’s degree, any Bible passages she used to know but married her mother (a Jewish schoolhas retained the “Jesuslike” principles of teacher from upstate New York), and empathy and being of service to others fell in love with the classic notion of the less fortunate. It can be something as simAmerican dream. When a revolution ple as giving away one of her little dogs to toppled the shah of Iran in 1979, her a depressed patient and writing him an father’s relatives joined the exodus of emotional support dog letter.

Iranians seeking refuge in and around a Partovi’s father died of cancer when burgeoning ethnic enclave of Westwood she was in her residency. Her mother that came to be known as “Tehrangesuffers from Alzheimer’s; her older halfles.” Partovi was 12 years old, the only sister from early onset dementia; and she member of the extended family born in provides round-the-clock care for both.

Los Angeles and the only one who didn’t She has never married. Black sheep or not, speak Farsi. She was the black sheep of she remains close with her father’s family, the family, she says good-humoredly, and especially the cousins closest to her in age; has been ever since. many of them, like By high school, her, are doctors. the dream of money, Partovi created two cars, and a house the Homeless Street left the precocious “WRITE THAT Medicine program at teenager seeking SHE’S NOT Venice Family Clinic a higher sense of way back in 2007, an purpose. With her JUDGMENTAL achievement that parents’ marriage LIKE DOCTORS landed her on L.A. on the rocks and CAN BE. SHE GETS Weekly’s list of Most drifting toward PEOPLE WITH Influential People divorce—“Lots of ADDICTIONS. in Los Angeles. She yelling and fighting,” SHE’S VERY was the medical she recalled, “a pretty field director for the dysfunctional famCARING.” county Department ily”—she delivered a A needle-exchange-program participant on Dr. Susan Partovi of Health Services’ shock to her mostly Housing for Health secular parents in 2014 and led a push with the news that for the Board of Sushe had become a pervisors to expand the powers of health born-again Christian. “I remember my officials to forcibly stabilize and treat the grandma in her broken English saying to severely mentally ill—people whose menme, ‘You’re a Christian now? That’s OK. tal disorders are so severe they cannot God still loves you.’ ” provide for their own basic life-sustaining She went to Bible study at a Presbyneeds. She was involved in creating the terian church in Brentwood and joined first and only Suboxone detox regimen at a youth group on a mission to Tijuana,

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the county’s women’s jail in 2017, treating dozens of inmates for opiate addiction.

Like many a passionate employee with a high degree of competence and independent streak, Partovi has clashed with bosses and been let go from jobs she loved. Four times in 11 years, to be precise, and always, she said, stemming from her advocacy for patients. She has developed a knack for sensing when a patient’s illness is life-threatening and how to treat it quickly, along with a proclivity for irking certain types of higher-ups who, she said, tend to hew too cautiously to protocol.

“I’m pushy,” she said. “This guy’s gonna die. They’re not in the field. They don’t see what I see. They feel pressured to comply. It definitely pisses people off. But when it works, it’s great.”

The Venice program still exists; the jail’s Suboxone regimen has been curtailed. Meanwhile, Partovi’s clinical duties on Skid Row are down to one day a week at Homeless Health Care, where she directs the needle exchange, runs the detox program, and tends to the wounds of intravenous drug users.

Travel to Maui and Mammoth is Partovi’s first love, and she also enjoys eating at gourmet restaurants—“I like nice things.

I host Botox parties. I’m no saint”—but she is happiest as a doctor when she is treating the homeless where they live.

“I want to find the sickest of the sick, the worst of the worst,” she said. “Mediating barriers, building trust, that’s for me.”

Her recent job history is a sensitive subject, and she is careful with her words.

“I’ll say this,” she told me, “I’ve never been fired for my patient care.” She has deep respect for HHCLA “because they push the envelope, too.” She is working with its CEO, Mark Casanova, to expand her involvement to homeless outreach beyond Skid Row. To make ends meet in the meantime, she sees patients four days a week at the Martin Luther King Jr. Outpatient Center in Willowbrook.

Earlier that morning when I was alone, I had met a homeless man in front of Homeless Health Care who had arrived early and was waiting for the needle exchange to open. When he learned I was writing about Partovi, he told me: “Write that she’s not judgmental like doctors can be. She gets people with addictions. She’s very caring, and she’s got a good heart and a lot of people like her.”

CRITICAL CARE Dr. Susan Partovi tends to a patient in a makeshift office near Skid Row

A

T HAR B OR-UCLA Medical Center, Partovi stopped in the traffic circle near the entrance to the emergency department.

She handed Melvin a handwritten doctor’s note and two tablets of Suboxone in case he started withdrawing in the waiting room. “Wait until you’re sick,” she instructed, “take it under your tongue, and it works in 10 minutes.” Melvin sat stockstill and appeared petrified.

The doctor said she wasn’t going inside with him. He got out a bit unsteadily, removed his wheeled suitcase from the rear of the car, and seemed to work up an effort to demonstrate his appreciation. “Melvin,” she interrupted, “they’re not going to let you bring your outfits in.” She used a word common to the argot of Skid Row for the tools in Melvin’s travel bag used to prepare and inject heroin. He rested his good hand on the lowered window and stared blankly back at her. “They make you run your bags through an X-ray belt,” she said.

He nodded, turned, and walked toward the sliding glass door of the ER, and Partovi asked me to go with him.

Inside the lobby, a small gray-haired man in the white uniform of a private security company stood behind the aforementioned X-ray belt. The hospital had one of those old metal detectors like the Transportation Security Administration uses when the line is extra long at the airport. The guard was waiting patiently for the only man in line to finish emptying the metal objects from his pockets into a plastic dish.

The guard seemed not to notice Melvin’s presence. It all seemed like standard operating procedure to me. But Melvin stood behind me, frozen in place, directly in the path of the automatic sliding door, which, because it couldn’t close, remained wide open. For some reason, he had pulled a white paper bag from the needle exchange out of his suitcase and was hugging it close to his chest. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?” he whispered.

The point of going the extra mile for a patient, Partovi had told me when we walked around Skid Row, is for the patient to know that she cares enough about them to go the extra mile, and that maybe one day they’ll care that much about themselves. She glanced up from her smartphone with a bemused expression when she saw that he and I had returned. Melvin’s face was ashen, his expression that of a scolded child. He said something to her about finding a place to hide the outfits somewhere he could pick them up later. “I’m gonna need these after,” he said sadly. He patted the breast pocket of his jacket where he had put the doctor’s note and thanked her for going to all the trouble.

Melvin asked Partovi to call his mother for him, and the doctor agreed.

She gave a serene sigh as she watched him pull his wheeled suitcase in the direction of a strip mall across the street, still hugging the bag to his chest with his bandaged hand.

L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA N G E L E S 25

VO LU N T E E R I S M

» BY ERIN BEHAN » PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROB NAPLES

FIND YOUR MATCH FROM FIGHTING HUNGER AMONG KIDS TO CREATING DANCE PARTIES FOR THOSE WITH SPECIAL NEEDS, L.A. WORKS IS EMPOWERING ANGELENOS TO VOLUNTEER AND COLLABORATE

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E RV I NG T H E L os Angeles community has been the mission of L.A. Works since 1991, and its niche is connecting people with volunteer opportunities, almost like a dating app. At LAWorks.com, would-be volunteers can browse through projects that best suit their interests, geographic location, age, and time availability. Whether to fix up a childcare center, teach music to at-risk youth, or volunteer at a dog adoption event, signing up is literally as easy as clicking a button.

“Most of our volunteers are L.A. community members,” says Deborah Brutchey, executive director for L.A. Works. “Search by zip code, by your available time, by your age…we try to make it very easy for people to get involved.”

Retired NBA star A.C. Green, a hero to Los Angeles Lakers fans, says when he volunteers for events through L.A. Works, all of his basketball accomplishments and affiliations fall away.

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"I worked hand-in-hand with Celtics fans, Clippers fans, you know, and I just laugh about it because everybody doesn't have to be a Lakers fan to get the job done," he says. “You have a chance to get out and really meet other people. You wind up finding out that you're from a different area code and zip code, but you have so much in common."

In addition to connecting non-profits with volunteers, famous or not, L.A. Works gets corporations involved too, creating customized community service experiences. One of its biggest annual events is MLK Day of Service, which draws thousands of people, and is held on the third Monday of each January to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.

"It gives us an opportunity to celebrate Dr. King's core values of social justice, economic opportunity, and community," says Bob L. Johnson, an

entertainment attorney who cofounded L.A. Works and serves as chairman on its board of directors.

At next year’s MLK Day of Service, volunteers from across Los Angeles will meet for a breakfast kickoff entitled “A Seat at the Table,” a nod to King's dream of "a nation that has a place at the table for children of every race." Afterward, volunteers will join together for a beautification project at LAUSD’s Orville Wright Middle School.

In the end, Johnson wants L.A. to be remembered not just for its "great weather, beaches, hiking, music, and entertainment, but also as a place where people give back and collaborate," he says. "And obviously with earthquakes and fires and civil disturbances, there's a certain value in knowing that we come together not only in times of crisis, but throughout the year."

LOCAL HEROES Clockwise from left: A.C. Green lends a painter’s touch; L.A. Works co-founder Bob L. Johnson; volunteers and kids at Alegria, a Salvation Army program that provides residential care for the chronically ill and child development services for younger family members.

L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA NG E L E S 27

DREAM MAKERS

» BY CHRIS NICHOLS » PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTINA GANDOLFO

DRESSED TO THRILL AN ANNUAL EVENT HELPS HUNDREDS OF TEENS IN L.A.’S FOSTER CARE SYSTEM GET DOLLED UP FOR THE MOST IMPORTANT NIGHT OF THE YEAR

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OST HIGH SCHOOLERS

approach prom night with a mix of anticipation and dread. Aside from the universal social pressures of planning parties and lining up an unembarrassing date, making the dance a “night to remember” often winds up being a rather costly affair. Teenagers—or, more often, their parents—can spend upward of $1,000 on tickets, formal attire, corsages, and a stretch limo. But if you’re one of the 30,000 kids in Los Angeles County’s foster care system, odds are

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you don’t have access to any of that.

That’s where CASA L.A. (Court Appointed Special Advocates) steps in. For the past 19 years the volunteer organization has been putting on its annual Glamour Gowns and Suit Up event, which mobilizes local fashion brands like Tadashi Shoji and Chinese Laundry along with area businesses such as the April Love Makeup Academy to donate prom-appropriate garments and beauty services for a daylong giveaway.

Members of movie wardrobe and costume designer unions offer their time

gratis to tailor each outfit for the perfect confidence-boosting fit.

This year more than 500 eligible kids (who are 15 or older and able to get themselves to the event) descended on the Los Angeles Convention Center to roam through racks of formalwear and blingy accessories. Participants were free to drop in for a makeover from NYX cosmetics and get a blowout from Drybar. There was even an on-site personal stylist to provide advice on colors, cuts, and hairstyles. “It was really bougie,” said 18-year-old Jaylene Avila, who

ELECTRIC YOUTH

Clockwise from left: Jovie Lomano is pretty in pink; Ant’Torian Smith suits up; Mary Sanchez and a stylist work to complete her ensemble; Jaylene Avila gets a touch-up from the April Love Makeup Academy; Avila after she’s ready for the big night; a bevy of donated evening bags

snagged an all-pink ensemble with a fancy bag and faux diamond earrings at the March 22 event. “I’ve never been to something like that.”

CASA CEO Wende Nichols-Julien says it’s not just girls who are excited about the festivities—boys are, too.

“When young men dress up in suits and stand in front of the mirror,” says Nichols-Julien, “they say, ‘I never pictured myself looking like this.’ They don’t have a lot of male mentors, certainly not ones dressed in full suits.”

Even after their prom, kids can re-

turn to the annual giveaway until they age out of the foster care system at 21.

Some go back every year. “I got pampered,” said Mary Sanchez, 20, who lives with a friend’s mom in North Hollywood. “I picked an ice-skating princess dress with a modern Audrey Hepburn twist.” After her shopping spree, Sanchez went on a date, while Avila had to tone down her new look to go to her job. “They teased my hair, but I had to take it out,” she said. “I work at a hot wings place, so I have to wear a hair net.”

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FOSTER CARE

» STORY BY DEGEN PENER » PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTINA GANDOLFO

FAMILY TRIES

FOR THOSE HOPING TO EXPAND THEIR HOUSEHOLD THROUGH L.A.’S FOST-ADOPT PROGRAM, THE PROCESS CAN END IN EITHER HAPPINESS OR HEARTACHE. SEVERAL SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FAMILIES SHARE THEIR STORIES

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N LAT E 2017 husbands Ivano and Stephen were at a playground in a West Hollywood park. A double stroller sat next to them; in it a little boy and a little girl, both less than a year old, slept. The infants were entrusted to them by the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services. The men told me their dream is to adopt both kids one day. ¶ But Ivano and Stephen, who asked that their real names not be used while they have ongoing placements with DCFS, no longer get their hopes up too high. They’ve already had to say goodbye to two other children. Their first foster placement was a newborn girl they cared for from the time she was seven days old to just before her first birthday. “She was tiny and sweet,” says Stephen, who was there when she took her first steps. The second foster child was a girl who was with them for the first nine months of her life. “She had a heart problem and needed regular medication and to be driven to specialists,” says Ivano. ¶ In each case there was a biological grandmother who initially told social workers she didn’t want the baby.

This scenario is what social workers will sometimes characterize as “low-risk” for foster parents, meaning a reunion with a child’s biological family seems unlikely. Social workers, says Stephen, “always make it sound as low-risk as possible.” But shortly after the two men had bonded with the first infant in their care, the grandmother changed her mind, and a judge later decided in her favor when it came to custody. After the child left their home, Stephen describes feeling so sad that it was like “having a rock in your heart.” History repeated itself with the couple’s second placement. ¶ The pair’s story resonates with me not just as a writer but also as someone who chose to start a foster family with his partner. The process is known as fost-adopt, and it’s an emotionally fraught path that offers no certainties. Over and over again, my partner and I encountered people who told us they’d love to fost-adopt but couldn’t put themselves through the possibility of bonding with and then losing a child. One friend told me point-blank: “You can’t do this to yourself.”

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This lack of assurance is only one of the reasons that child welfare agencies like DCFS struggle with finding enough foster parents. Money typically isn’t the issue—unlike private adoption, which can involve fees of $25,000 to $50,000, the cost of adopting through government channels is relatively manageable.

(Some private agencies that handle public adoptions charge an up-front fee of $2,000 to work with prospective parents, but that’s often refunded if a placement is made. DCFS also pays foster parents an $889 to $1,710 monthly support fee, depending on the medical needs of the child, to help with expenses.) What really holds people back is the prospect of psychological turmoil: the near certainty of feeling powerless within a system that is huge and overburdened. Every highly subjective case—each involving biological parents, other family members, and foster parents—is in the hands of a complex network of social workers, family court judges, and public defenders, all of whom are trying to determine the best interests of a child.

Add to that the fact that DCFS is the largest child welfare system in the country. At any given time, the department, which is strained beyond belief in its mission to prevent child abuse and neglect, is responsible for the well-being of 35,000 children. It employs 8,000 social workers who fan out across the county’s 4,751 square miles. Bobby Cagle, the agency’s new director, who came here after heading Georgia’s division of Family and Children Services, finds that the “stress on families is just greater” in L.A.’s urban environment. “A lot of what we see,” says Cagle, “is very much related to concentrated poverty and generational poverty”—increasingly aggravated by a lack of affordable housing. Substance abuse by parents is also a huge factor; if a baby is found to have drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine in his or her system at birth, DCFS will immediately remove the child from the mother.

There are so many children in need with too few suitable foster families to take

FOST-ADOPT SUCCESS STORY

Raquel Guerra-Luna (left), her wife, Grissel Luna, and their four adopted children, (from left) Leo, Andrew, Rachel, and Daniel

them in that there’s always an overarchusually takes about three to four months. ing sense of crisis. These days, it’s hard to With fost-adopt, also known as confind homes even for newborns. “There’s a current planning, biological parents are great need for famitypically given up to lies able to provide two years to prove short-term care for to the court that they kids coming right are fit to parent.

“WE RECEIVE out of the hospital,” In the meantime, ABOUT 50 PHONE says Amy Heilman, the child is placed CALLS A DAY, director of foster care with either a family SEVEN DAYS A and adoption at the offering temporary nonprofit Children’s foster care or with WEEK, FROM Bureau of Southern prospective parents DCFS WORKERS California, which who hope to adopt ASKING IF WE contracts with DCFS their charges. DurHAVE A HOME to help find foster ing this time there AVAILABLE.” homes. “There is will generally be Amy Heilman, director of a lack of families for court-ordered visits foster care and adoption, teenagers. There’s with the biological Children’s Burea of Southern California an extreme shortage family. “You are of families to care for really planning siblings. We receive along two lines,” about 50 phone says Cagle. “You’ve calls a day, seven days a week, from got a plan for reunification, and you also DCFS workers asking if we have a home have a plan for adoption.” (The goal of available.” the child welfare system is to reunite a The worst fate that can befall a kid is child with biological parents whenever to bounce from foster home to foster possible.) home, never forming permanent bonds.

Typically fost-adopt cases proceed in But one of the most heartbreaking phases. In the beginning, support servicstatistics of all is the percentage of foster es are offered to help bring about reunifikids—who’ll often say they’d never want cation. But if the biological parents don’t anyone else to experience what they’ve show up for supervised meetings, say, or gone through—whose own children don’t complete court-ordered anger-manbecome the concern of DCFS. In L.A., agement classes, DCFS will suspend the among foster youths who become parprocess. Eventually the biological parents while in the system, 23 percent of ents’ rights can be terminated. After a their kids have open child welfare cases.

30-day appeal phase, the child is legally available for adoption by a foster family.

In Los Angeles and most other places in the U.S., the two-year plan has been emEAR WAS NO T a deterrent braced because of a widely held belief when it came to my partner that a child should, at some point, have and I wanting to provide a permanency; in other words, biological home for one of these kids. parents don’t have the right to disappear Like any other prospective foster parindefinitely and then reappear. “They’ve ents, we took the required parenting got a time-limited circumstance when classes and were interviewed three they can get their act together,” says Catimes at home by social workers; we gle. “Failing that means they’re going to were fingerprinted, we submitted to lose their child.” background checks, and we had our In September 2015 my partner and I home assessed for safety. We were able got a call from our social worker, who told to specify the characteristics (age, race, us about a 19-month-old toddler who gender) we wanted in a child and could needed a home. Deemed a low-risk case, delineate any deal breakers (a child who she hadn’t seen her parents since birth, had behavioral problems, whose parents and they weren’t actively trying to reuniwere incarcerated, or who was born fy with her. Her previous foster mom, a of incest.) The whole approval process

F

32 L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA NG E L E S

relative, was unable to continue caring for her. After hearing the specifics of the situation, we said yes immediately. Even so, there was always a swirling undertow of anxiety that things could change. (As one social worker told me at the time, “Low-risk is low-risk until it isn’t.”)

But we lucked out. Our case went to termination of parental rights in a relatively swift six months—I’ll never forget when the judge said that he was ending the rights of not only the toddler’s biological father and mother but also of “anyone else who may come forward to claim they are her parent”—and to full adoption in ten months. In September we celebrated our third “family-versary.”

Our worst fear never materialized— our little girl stayed with us. But that comment from a friend, the one who told me I could by no means open myself up to the possibility of loss, is something that’s stayed with me. Which got me thinking: What about all the foster parents out there who have had to say goodbye to a child they have nurtured and loved? How do they cope?

S

H E E NA A N D H E R husband, David, (not their real names) have welcomed four infants into their home in the span of ten months. Three have already come and gone, all reunited with biological family members. The fourth and latest was born to a drug-addicted mom; the back of his head is flat from spending nights in a car seat because his parents didn’t have a crib. “It’s been crazy, it’s been surreal, it’s been amazing, it’s been heartbreaking—it’s been everything under the sun,” Sheena says.

Going in, she explains, she figured she could deal with the loss of a placement.

“I’m an adult. I can go to therapy. I know my heart can heal. My husband and I could go on a trip and try to forget about it.” What caught her off guard was her experience with the foster system. “We found that literally nothing we were told was ever true,” she says. “That, for me, has been the harshest reality.” For instance, the couple was assured that the biological father of one infant had no known family. Six weeks later they were informed that the dad’s family had

DOMESTIC BLISS Grissel Luna oversees snack time with Leo and Rachel. “You have to make sure you’re

doing this out of your heart ... because it’s going to hurt,” she says of the fost-adopt process

stepped up and that the infant would be leaving the very next day. “We had three different county social workers in those six weeks, and nobody told us that anyone was even being considered or vetted,” Sheena says. “We were blindsided.”

There was a moment, however, when her faith in the system was restored.

After the third child, a meth-exposed infant, left their home to live with an uncle, “the bio mom said to me, ‘Thank you for taking care of my baby,’ ” she recalls. “By this time, we were so broken.

Just to hear something like that brought it all back to why we are doing this. It’s to keep children safe.” The mother of their current foster child recently entered rehab. “She could get her life together, and she could get her kid back—or her history could repeat itself,” Sheena says.

“I’m having a hard time. On a human level, you don’t want anybody to fail, but as a foster parent, you are tormented. Do I think this girl is going to get it together? I really don’t. I really don’t believe this little boy has a safe place to go back to.”

Another couple, Raquel Guerra-Luna and Grissel Luna, were able to adopt the first child placed with them. But their next two placements ended with the

kids returning to their families. In one case, a girl who came to their home at 11 months old was placed with an aunt and uncle eight months later; the relatives never even knew the baby existed due to family estrangement. “You do fall in love with them, and you have to fall in love with them, because that’s what they need, and that’s what they deserve,” says Luna. “It does devastate you when they leave. Raquel and I sit on the couch crying, but we also know that we gave them a safe, loving place while they were here with us.” Guerra-Luna agrees. “After every kid leaves, we swear we aren’t going to do it again,” she says. “But we enjoy helping—it just outweighs the pain. Our goal from the beginning was not only to adopt but to foster, knowing that they are going to leave.”

The couple’s outlook got me thinking about fost-adopt differently. Is it possible to make the process about serving children in need regardless of how high- or low-risk their cases may be? Rich Valenza, the founder of Raise a Child, an L.A.based nonprofit that recruits foster parents, frames it this way: “If you have the calling to help a child, why put yourself in a protective silo?” he says. “I ask [par-

ents] to try to relate it to what they go through in their own loving adult relationships. Life itself is about winning and losing and loving and then healing sometimes.” He points out how rare it is for someone to spend their whole life with the first person they fall in love with. If most of us can pursue love time and again despite the risk of heartbreak, perhaps potential foster parents could approach fost-adopt similarly.

Of course, there are many families who are able to adopt their first placement. But more than half can’t. Of the 7,613 kids who left foster care in 2016, 4,890 were reunified with biological family, while 1,519 were adopted, and 1,204 entered legal guardianship. “In L.A. County as a whole, most children will reunify,” says Heilman. But reunification isn’t always everyone’s idea of a happy ending. Heilman has learned that foster parents find it tough to bounce back if a judge makes decisions that don’t seem to be in the best interests of the child. “When children are reunified with family members that we don’t feel are going to keep them safe, people think, ‘Can I continue to work in the system?’ ” she says. Adds Valenza, “What

L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA NG E L E S 33

fices where it’s been implemented (Santa we encourage people to do is think about Fe Springs and Glendora), placements the good that they did in those days or with extended family have risen from weeks or months for that child. They’ve around 50 percent to 80 percent. The given them a soft place to land.” program, which has been expanded to Equally painful is when a relative other offices, both encourages social shows up seeking custody of a child late workers to prioritize placing children in the process, especially when the child with biological family and connects has been with a foster family for an them with DCFS workers who specialextended period of time or was previousize in using technology to identify kin. ly unknown to the relative. In a high-pro“Foster care shouldn’t be a first resort— file case in 2016, a court ordered county it should be a last resort,” says Nash, a social workers to remove six-year-old former juvenile court judge. “I think that Lexi, who is 1.5 percent Choctaw Indian, the ultimate solution really lies in doing from her foster home of four years and a much better job at placing kids with place her with non-native, non-blood their own families. There are many, family members in Utah. (Her case fell many studies out there that suggest, genunder the Indian Child Welfare Act.) erally speaking, that kids are better off Her foster parents appealed to the state with their families. If they have to be reSupreme Court and even petitioned the moved from their parents, there’s less U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that trauma if they stay somewhere within removing Lexi was a misapplication of their own families.” He adds that “a fair the ICWA, but the decision proved to be amount of the kids final. “In Georgia, we have been placed struggled with this with a nonoffending issue,” Cagle recalls. parent, and often “Periodically we “OFTENTIMES that involves fathers, would have family I THINK THAT who are frequently members who would [REUNIFICATION the forgotten people come up near the WITH BIOLOGICAL in the system.” A conclusion of a court FAMILY] IS handful of state laws process and introNOT THE BEST passed recently also duce themselves to seek to treat extendthe court, and the THING FOR THE ed family members court would manCHILD.” as equivalent to typidate that we make Bobby Cagle, director, Los Angeles County cal foster parents, some sort of effort to Department of Child and meaning that they put the child with Family Services must undergo the them. Those end up same certification being the most and training and heart-wrenching sitthat they’ll receive the same reimburseuations possible.” In such cases, Cagle ments. “The idea is really to set the relaadmits: “Oftentimes I think that [reunifitives up for success,” says Valenza. cation with biological family] is not the A welcome by-product of this push best thing for the child.” Sheena has simcould be that the kids who are placed ilar thoughts. “The fate of these little with unrelated foster parents will be ones is in the hands of some judge who more likely to stay there. “If we do a really just feels like putting them back with good job on the front end, you ought to be their family on any given day,” she says. able to exclude any other relative coming “That’s where I feel like the system realforward,” says Cagle. But there’s currently needs to change.” ly no law or directive that would prevent A new county initiative aims to make relatives who emerge later in the process late-stage removals to family members from attempting to take children out of less common. Headed by Michael Nash, their foster homes. Everything is left to the executive director of the county’s the discretion of judges, who rely on their Office of Child Protection, the project own assessment of the case as well the seeks to identify relatives at the front end recommendations of DCFS. of the process. At the first two DCFS of-

34 L A M AG . C O M/G I V E L O SA NG E L E S

For David and Aaron Orencyr, the judicial system worked in their favor.

They have cared for two foster kids in the last three years: a boy who came to them when he was around a year old, and, for a time, his half-sister, who was reunited with a biological family member. Two years into the boy’s placement, the children’s DCFS social worker identified a great-aunt who wanted to take him.

“Foster parents feel they have no rights, but they can advocate on their behalf,” David says. “We wrote letters to the judge, to DCFS. We felt it was important that people see the whole story.

There are ways of making your voice heard.” In the end, the judge decided not to place the boy with his great-aunt, a ruling that came in spite of the recommendation of their DCFS worker, who, say the Orencyrs, believed it was better that the child be with a Spanish-speaking caregiver and in a “more traditional” setting than a home with two dads. (Notwithstanding the Orencyrs’ experience, DCFS and the agencies that contract with it are overwhelmingly supportive of LGBTQ couples and singles adopting, especially given the great need for foster parents.) “It was very back and forth, but the judge saw through it,” says Aaron.

“The judge didn’t feel it was appropriate to move the child after such a long time in a steady home.” The adoption was finalized earlier this year.

Guerra-Luna and Luna have also grown their forever family. They recently adopted three young siblings, two boys and a girl, posting photos on Facebook for the first time with a proud and happy announcement. (DCFS forbids putting images of foster kids on social media out of privacy concerns.)

As for Stephen and Ivano and the two children in their care, there’s at least some good news. Earlier this year a judge terminated the parental rights of the boy, and now the couple is awaiting a court date to finalize an adoption. As for the girl? “We wait and see,” says Stephen.

“We are bracing for the worst and hoping for the best.”

Degen Pener is a contributing writer for Los Angeles. He wrote about downtown’s Bendix Building as a haven for artists in the August 2018 issue.

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