FIRST PERSON / VIVIAN ROTHSTEIN : Quake Fears Still Haunt Operator of Homeless Shelter : The Northridge temblor left woman’s home damaged and her social service agency’s quarters in ruins. On both fronts, recovery has been a frustrating and emotionally draining process.

Vivian Rothstein, a Santa Monica resident and single mother of two, is the executive director of the Ocean Park Community Center, which has provided social services on the Westside since 1963.

I was rocking in my bedroom doorway amid the roar of the earthquake and the clatter of falling objects last January, when I started to worry about Turning Point.

It wasn’t idle fear. Turning Point is the homeless shelter run by my agency, the Ocean Park Community Center. It had quarters in the basement of a seismically unsound brick church in Santa Monica.

Worrying about Turning Point was all I could do at first. Like others, I huddled outside my house in a bathrobe. The phone was dead; power out. My sister dropped by. Her visit was quite a surprise because she was a patient at Santa Monica Hospital.

Evacuated after the quake, and probably in shock, she walked two miles through dark streets to my house. An IV shunt was still taped to her hand, yet she automatically started cleaning up the mess on my floor.

As it got light, I could see the sky through the wide crack in my living room wall; the chimney bricks lay in a heap on the lawn. I did not know it then, but it would take $30,000 to put my house back together and three times that to keep Turning Point going.

Thankfully, my kids were safe--my daughter away at a youth conference; my son at college in Boston.

As I soon found out, shelter residents rode out the temblor safely, too. Too bad I can’t say the same about the First Christian Church, the beautiful old building that had been Turning Point’s home. It has since been torn down.

Though everyone was unharmed, we faced an enormous problem, an all too familiar one to our 35 shelter residents: Where would they sleep that night and from then on?

By noon, I already had an agreement with city officials to let them bed down for a few days at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. This gave us a little time.

In the best of circumstances, it is difficult to find a property owner who will welcome a homeless shelter, so prospects for finding refuge were not good.

Meanwhile, my situation at home deteriorated.

On the day after the quake, my next-door neighbor came by to announce he was suing me because my chimney had knocked over his chimney. The encounter was surreal. I asked myself, “How could he be talking to me like this?”

That night, my daughter came home. She and her friends wept for their bashed-in city.

The next day, I sent her to wait in line at FEMA so we could apply for disaster aid for our house, while I got back on the phone to find a place for Turning Point. No luck.

Then one of my board members thought of renting beds in a youth hostel. It was off-season, so we found space in Venice. In April, we moved again, this time to four rented trailers. We parked them on property we are remodeling as a permanent home for Turning Point and some of our other programs.

My biggest fear--that the earthquake would ruin me financially--came pouring out months later at, of all places, the idyllic terrace of The Inn at Morro Bay, where I had gone for a getaway weekend.

Even before the earthquake, this was probably the most expensive year of my life. I had just bought my ex-husband’s share of our house. That meant I had two mortgages, two kids in private colleges and a guy next door who wanted me to pay for his earthquake repairs. I felt that if I lost my home, I would lose everything.

The insurance adjusters, both mine and my neighbor’s, were a surprising source of support and solace. My neighbor’s insurance man offered me this piece of advice: Don’t be angry at the guy next door. You might need him to pull you out of the rubble after the next disaster.

Ultimately, FEMA came through with money for me, but not for Turning Point. Their rules say nonprofit groups have to own property to get disaster grant money.

When these two nice guys from FEMA broke the bad news to me, I started to cry. We had taken on all these relocation expenses based on assurances from FEMA that we would be eligible for aid. Now what? I thought we would have to close down the shelter.

Help arrived from United Way, which took on our appeal and persuaded FEMA to reverse itself.

A check for $69,000 arrived just in time for Christmas. My own insurance company had already paid off my claim. They also are canceling my earthquake policy.

Still, the house is repaired--and bolted to the foundation. My sister is feeling better. Santa Monica is recovering.

I feel lucky, but not safe. I now have fantasies of getting killed in my house. Maybe that’s why I took the claims adjuster’s advice and forgave my neighbor.

I now wave to him. Occasionally, we exchange pleasantries. But we never talk about the earthquake.