Boys & Girls Club Gets Boost From Columbia Pictures

With a little help from Dustin Hoffman, youths in Fillmore and Piru will have a Boys & Girls Club before summer vacation.

Organizers, who hope the club will keep kids off the street and out of gangs, have received a $16,000 donation from Columbia Pictures, which is producing Hoffman’s new film, “Hero.”

The film opens with a plane crash, which was shot in Piru. Sandy Isaac, the movie’s associate producer, thanked Fillmore and Piru “for being so enthusiastic and helping us out. The actors had a good time.”

About 160 area businesses and individuals had donated a total of $42,000 for the club, and Columbia’s contribution put organizers over the top in raising the $50,000 needed to obtain a matching grant from the city. The funds will keep the new Boys & Girls Club in operation for two years, until it is eligible for United Way funding.

For nearly two years, Fillmore community leaders and local law enforcement have pinned their hopes on the club as a way to curb the city’s growing gang problem. Of about 3,400 students in the local school district, approximately 100 are gang members, said Lt. Dick Purnell of the Ventura County sheriff’s substation in Fillmore.

While no one views the after-school activities planned for the club as a sure-fire cure for hard-core gang members, “We hope it will provide a resource to keep younger kids from becoming gang members,” Purnell said.

He cited a 5-year-old study done in Vista in San Diego County, “where a Boys & Girls Club significantly reduced crime” such as graffiti and burglaries, both of which have been on the rise in Fillmore.

At a kickoff hosted by the Fillmore Rotary Club on Thursday, community leaders gave credit to Sheriff’s Deputy Max Pina for his efforts on behalf of Fillmore’s youth. Besides serving as president of the Boys & Girls Club board, Pina runs a class at Fillmore Senior High School aimed at prying teen-agers from gangs and finding them jobs. And gang members drop by his house so frequently that Undersheriff Larry Carpenter called the Pina home “the second sheriff’s substation.”

“Our dream’s finally coming true,” Pina said Thursday. “The kids are really talking about the club, anxious for it to start.”

High school junior Crystal Chaveste agreed. “There’ll be a place to go, to have fun without getting into trouble.”

A 1,500-square-foot trailer, donated by the county sheriff’s office with the help of Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee, should be in place on city-owned land on Main Street near Central Avenue in April, Purnell said.

Purnell said he expects about 100 young people ages 8 and over to use the club daily. Organizers plan to hire a coordinator and make use of local volunteers, but ultimately the boys and girls themselves will design the program.

“They’ll decide what’s going to happen,” said Lawrence Faulkner, who has volunteered his time to draft plans for the layout of the club. “It’s supposed to be theirs.”