A wilderness escape with lifelong influence

By age 11, Mario Rosas had lost one brother to suicide, another to gangs, his father to alcoholism and his mother to the four jobs she worked to support her six children.

But his life as a child wasn’t all gloom. Like so many kids from his South Los Angeles neighborhood, Rosas credits All People’s Christian Center for his best memories. The community center offered them a place to play basketball and learn arts and crafts, develop mentors and -- best of all -- the chance to escape their concrete enclave for the fresh air and open skies of summer camp.

Rosas, now 26, went to Camp Joe Ide in Mentone, Calif., nearly every year until he turned 17. It was just one week a year, but it was enough to keep him counting down the days. There, he learned to swim and fish, build toy boats, picture frames and key chains. Mealtime was his favorite because, unlike at home, everyone ate together.

“I liked the whole eating at a table with friends,” he says. “Just being able to experience something like that,” he says. “It was nice.”

Rosas’ story is just one of thousands. Now in its 50th year, the Los Angeles Times Summer Camp Campaign has raised a combined $28 million to send to camp 380,000 economically disadvantaged or disabled children from the five counties of Southern California.

Like Rosas, many people who as children were aided by The Times campaign credit the camping experience with helping to shape who they are today.

Rosas, a double major in fine art and liberal arts at Cal State Northridge, says going to camp gave him the confidence he needed to pursue his goal of teaching elementary school. He also volunteers at Camp Joe Ide, working with kids from his old neighborhood.

“The structure helped my self-esteem,” he says. “It really had a lot to do with the way I am now.”

Saundra Bryant also saw her life change through camp. As the youngest of three and the only girl in her family, Bryant was shy and withdrawn. Both her parents worked, so she was on her own in the summer. Often, she stayed indoors and watched TV because it wasn’t safe enough to play outside.

But when she did venture out, she went around the corner from her home to socialize at All Peoples Christian Center. She was 8 the first time she attended the center’s camp.

“It was scary at first, but it was so incredible to be out in the open and to see the stars that you couldn’t see when you’re in the city,” says Bryant, now 48. “They had a trout pond there, and we went fishing. If you caught a fish ... they told you this was the fish you would get on your plate.”

A few years later, when Bryant was 12, she would watch the U.S. National Guard tanks roll down her street after the Watts riots. A group of teenagers who were headed to summer camp that year had to get permission from the troops to leave the neighborhood. The trauma of witnessing that made Bryant’s escape to the wilderness all the more poignant.

“One of the things that was so different was coming back to the neighborhood and realizing that there’s another world out there, that there’s so much to offer us and it’s outside of just the community we were in,” she says. “I think I had more of an appreciation to see more, to learn more. I had more of an appreciation of nature because you could actually feel and witness it and you were so much a part of it ... it’s just you saw yourself differently, without limits, without restrictions.”

Over the years, Bryant began volunteering as a counselor. Eventually, she attended college and returned to the neighborhood. Today, she’s the executive director of All Peoples Christian Center and coordinates with The Times fund to select children for the program.

“This is the place that literally raised me,” she says. “And now I’m able to give that camping experience to other young people.”

The Times launched its summer camp fund in 1954 after research in the late 1940s and early 1950s found that thousands of Southern California’s poor and disabled children were excluded from the latest kid trend: camping. So with an inaugural donation of $10,000, the “kids-to-camp” campaign began.

But in the years since the fund began, money for camps has dried up, says Cathie Mostovoy, chief executive of the Woodcraft Rangers, which runs Stanley Ranch Camp in Castaic and has been helping disadvantaged kids go to camp for 40 years through the Times fund. Instead, she says, more money these days goes to after-school and academic programs. (Woodcraft Rangers runs its own after-school programs at 40 sites around the city.)

Mostovoy says those programs are important, but recreation for recreation’s sake is equally important. At camp, children learn social skills needed to survive as an adult -- to know what they like, to develop interests, to get along in a group, to negotiate.

“The Los Angeles Times Summer Camp fund is one of the only ones still out there to fund camping,” Mostovoy says. “Very few foundations and corporations still have camping as one of their priority areas.”

This summer, about 11,000 low-income or disabled children, selected by 67 nonprofit organizations, will go to camp thanks to the $1.6 million raised by The Times last summer. This year’s fundraising drive ensures that as many children will be able to go next summer. The Times fund contributes $175 per camper, and all camps involved have been certified by the American Camping Assn.

“These kids are really deserving,” says Chia Yen, the Los Angeles Times Family Fund director of development. “These kids don’t get a break.”

This year, the McCormick Tribune Foundation will match the first $1.1 million in contributions at 50 cents on the dollar raised from now through Labor Day.

“With any part of that puzzle missing,” says Gisselle Acevedo-Franco, Times vice president of public affairs, “those kids couldn’t go to camp.”

Donations are tax-deductible as permitted by law. For more information, call (213) 237-5771. To make credit card donations, visit latimes.com/summercamp. To send checks, use the attached coupon.

Unless requested otherwise, gifts of $50 or more will be acknowledged in The Times. The summer camp campaign is part of the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation.