Pitching In for Kenny

Oxnard Police Officer Jeff Shelton walked into the dark recesses of Sam’s Saloon earlier this week and told his friends a sad story.

Kenny Wells, a bright but shy sixth-grader at Blackstock Middle School, where Shelton was a youth officer, had died just a few days before and the boy’s family couldn’t pay for the funeral. Could they help him out?

His three friends anted up $50.

When Shelton talked to Bob Brown at Harbor Plumbing, Brown was touched too. Shelton walked out of the store with another $120.

Kenny’s classmates at Blackstock pitched in $150 for their 11-year-old friend, and the street officers and top commanders at Oxnard Police Department threw $400 into the pot.

“When I started telling people about it, they just wanted to help out,” said Shelton, who spent two days trying to raise the $1,215 needed to pay for Kenny’s service, scheduled this afternoon.

“He was just a nice kid with a single mom who I’d gotten to know over the year,” Shelton said. “I just couldn’t let him go without a proper burial.”

As the youth officer assigned to the school, Shelton talks to kids who get into trouble. If they are having problems at home, he sometimes stretches his job description a bit and becomes a counselor or confidant for them.

“Kenny didn’t cause any problems,” Shelton said. “He was a real good kid.”

But the boy’s short life wasn’t easy.

Kathy Gomez took temporary guardianship of Kenny when his mother went through a rough patch at home last year. The skinny boy lived with Gomez and her family for five months, then continued to stay with them on weekends.

He was close friends with her 11-year-old son, Anthony, who has fallen into a deep depression since Kenny’s death Saturday.

“They called each other brothers,” Gomez said. “[Anthony’s] been sleeping a lot and crying a lot. He really misses him.”

Kenny was not much different from most young boys his age. He loved to play Super Nintendo and Legos. But he had a very sensitive side, Gomez said.

“He was sort of a free spirit, a very likable kid. He’d just smile, and it was so easy to get along with him,” she said.

Kenny loved to draw, and Gomez would tell him that she was sure he’d be a famous artist one day. “He was so talented. He’d draw little birds and things,” she said.

Teacher Lynn Shaw said Kenny had unusually beautiful handwriting and seemed to take extra care with his homework, as if he knew it was special.

Although he suffered from asthma, Kenny usually was vigorous.

But the weekend before he died, Kenny began wheezing heavily after jumping on his bed with Anthony, Gomez said. A doctor took a look at him and prescribed medicine. Then, a week later, Kenny fell ill at his mother’s home.

“She came over and asked me to dial 911,” Gomez said. Paramedics “got here real quick and took him over to the hospital.”

Gomez called her sisters and brothers--who Kenny referred to as his aunts and uncles--and they followed the boy to St. John’s Regional Medical Center. But it was too late by the time Kenny arrived. The doctors told Gomez that the boy’s lungs just gave out.

That night, Gomez called Shelton to tell him the news.

“He was very helpful with everything,” she said. “He helped with the arrangements and raising the money.”

Shelton also managed to get Garcia Mortuary in Oxnard to give the family a discount. And after spending two days talking to fellow officers, friends and the boy’s neighbors, he managed to raise the money needed to guarantee that Kenny would be buried.

“It was just something I wanted to do,” he said.

Visitation will be from noon to 2 p.m. today at the mortuary, with a graveside service at 3 p.m. at Ivy Lawn Cemetery in Ventura.

Shaw said the school is raising money to pay for flowers for the funeral and a tombstone. Anyone wanting to contribute may call Blackstock Vice Principal Helen Cosgrove at 488-3644.

Any additional money collected will be given to asthma research.