Children Put Life Back in Preschool Damaged by Arson

It was Friday, and Jessica Rutan’s 3-year-olds were on their way to an Indian reservation. That meant they all had to choose Indian names for themselves.

“So far, we have Blue Coyote and Running Hamster,” Rutan told her visitor.

In a classroom next door, 5-year-old Rebecca Goodman was also preparing for the pretend trip.

As she sang three verses of “Three Little Indians,” her tiny voice was occasionally overwhelmed by the sound of hammers and power saws.

Last week, amid the unrelenting clatter of construction crews, Village Preschool in Yorba Linda reopened.

The school had closed in March after three arson fires left it in ruins, causing $100,0000 damage.

Just two of its five classrooms are in use; the others are still under repair. Its enrollment is 20--less than its current capacity of 35 students and considerably less than its enrollment last spring of 140.

Yet Louise Villeneuve, the preschool’s 72-year-old owner, known to her students as “Grandma,” is grateful.

“It was just a big, old piece of property waiting for the children to come back,” Villeneuve said of the broad, adobe-style building on Imperial Highway. “Now it’s full of life, laughter, happiness and joy.”

The fires in March followed an incident last year in which employees found the bodies of several rabbits from the preschool strewn over the school’s front lawn.

Villeneuve originally thought someone may have been trying to intimidate her into selling the property, which is considered some of the choicest land in the city. But four months after the fires, she said, “no one has come around asking to buy my property.”

Last week, Orange County Fire Capt. Patrick McIntosh would say only that the fires were probably started by one person and that “an ongoing, active criminal investigation is being conducted.”

To guard against another arsonist, Villeneuve has hired someone to live on the grounds in a mobile home. And she is continuing the school’s regular fire drills.

“I’m apprehensive,” she said, “because I don’t know who did it or why they did it.”

Village Preschool closed after the first fire, on March 11, forcing many families to scramble for alternative day care. “The day after we closed,” Villeneuve said, “parents just cried and cried on the phone.”

Yet many students have not returned their children to the school. “We used to have a waiting list,” said Fahi Vazirian, who has been the school’s director for six years. “But being closed four months really hurt us. Lots of parents are committed to other schools.”

Some parents who originally had their children at the school, Vazirian said, “are waiting to see what happens the first couple of days before they come in and sign up.”

Despite the three fires, Chris Weiss of Yorba Linda said she is not afraid to send her children, 5-year-old Matthew and 3-year-old Cassidy, back to the school. Because the arsonist struck each time when the school was vacant, Weiss said, “he apparently didn’t want to harm anyone.” She added, “The school is so great I couldn’t keep my kids out of there.”

Nor could Karen Hirsh stay away. Hirsh taught at the school for several years until the fires last spring, when she found another job in San Diego. When she heard the school was reopening, she came back.

Friday, standing over a table of 5-year-olds downing milk and graham crackers, Hirsh said: “This is home, and I’ll never be as happy anywhere I work.”

Villeneuve and Vazirian hope construction will be finished--and attendance back to normal--by September. They will spend the next several years replacing the toys, furniture and books destroyed in the fires.

“It’s sad to see this bookcase,” Vazirian said, sitting in the school’s bare office and gazing at a piece of furniture that held about a dozen volumes. “We used to have thousands of books, and now. . . .”

“It takes time to accumulate things,” Villeneuve added. “But we’ll get there, step by step.”