Family Evicted by Storm Receives Special Delivery

In the season of El Nino, la nina can be a welcome sight.

Just ask Mary Mejia, whose most recent nina, April Marie, burst into the world a week after her family had been flooded out of their Port Hueneme apartment.

“I’m real tired but I’m happy,” Mejia, 22, said as she prepared to leave the Ventura County Medical Center on Tuesday. Still, the plan was never for April to start life homeless.

Mejia, her two other young children, and her husband, Salvador Mejia Perez, were rudely awakened last Tuesday by muddy knee-deep water swirling through their Surfside Drive apartment.

Along with 40 others in the low-lying complex, they fled as the cold tide engulfed their new $1,000 couch, their clothing, the kids’ toys and everything else. On top of that, the flood waters knocked their car out of commission.

Ever since, the family has been bunking in a donated room at the Doubletree Hotel in Ventura, where Salvador works as a waiter.

Mary was rushed from hotel to hospital Monday night. After nine hours of labor came la nina April, all 8 pounds, 10 ounces of her.

The family’s next move is as up in the air as the next storm. Repairs to the apartment could take weeks or even months.

Meanwhile, a hotel room, as nice as it may be, is no place for a newborn, a 3-year-old girl, a 5-year-old boy and two weary parents.

And Mary, a gas-station cashier, said the clan can’t stay with her parents: They had been living in the same flooded-out complex two blocks from the beach.

The family is meeting with the Red Cross this week for help in finding another place. In the meantime, Doubletree officials said the family will have a place to stay.

But as of Tuesday, a permanent solution seemed elusive.

“We’re just not sure,” said Mary, signing the forms to leave the hospital and give la nina her first glimpse of blue sky.