Parents of Camarillo Patients Tour Center in Costa Mesa

Hoping to put her mind at ease, Claire Gagnon drove up from Oceanside on Saturday for a two-hour tour of the place where her son, Dean, could end up when Camarillo State Hospital closes later this year.

It was her first look at Fairview Developmental Center, and what she found was a facility not unlike the one at Camarillo.

The Costa Mesa center has its own swimming pool, petting zoo and gymnasium. It has its own barber shop and religious services for Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Most important, it has an active parent group and solid treatment programs for its clients.

But despite all that--and the fact that it would be a shorter drive from her home to visit her 35-year-old son--Gagnon said she is unconvinced that putting him at Fairview is the best thing to do.

“I was hoping it would not be so urban, that it would be a little more rural like Camarillo,” said Gagnon of the treatment center flanked by a golf course and a row of apartments and houses deep in the heart of Orange County.

“But what choice do we have?” she said. “We’re forced into it. Our children are being moved out against our wishes.”

Change is not coming easy for many of the parents at Camarillo State, about 30 of whom toured Fairview on Saturday. And they fear it will be even harder on their children because some of them have been at the mental hospital for decades.

But with the facility set to shut down by July 1, most parents are frantically looking for new homes for their loved ones.

For some, Fairview is the best option. The newest of the state’s residential facilities for the developmentally disabled, the 38-year-old center is expected to take up to 178 of the 700 patients at Camarillo State. The first 48, a group of patients with autism, are expected to arrive in April.

“It’s panicville for us,” said Marlene Marion, whose 40-year-old son, Richard, has been at Camarillo for about 14 years. She and her husband had planned to retire in Port Hueneme so they could be near the mental hospital. But when Gov. Pete Wilson announced the closure last year, they decided to move to San Diego County and find a new place for him.

“I have a good feeling about Fairview,” she said after previewing the facility. “They had a wonderful program up there [at Camarillo], but I don’t know that it won’t be matched here.”

Like Marion, most of the parents at Fairview on Saturday have mentally retarded children on Unit 88, a ward where about a dozen patients have been together for 15 to 20 years. After a short introduction, the parents were packed into vans and driven around the grounds, stopping now and then for a closer look at some facilities.

Unlike Camarillo’s sun-bleached, Spanish-style buildings, the units at Fairview are blocky and tan, sporting brown trim the color of coffee. The parents were able to tour the unit where their children probably will be housed, meeting Fairview patients along the way.

“I’ve seen college dorms much worse than this,” said Karleen Allen of Norco, Calif., whose daughter, Judy, has been at Camarillo State for three decades.

For many of these parents, the hope is to transfer the Unit 88 patients together to ease the trauma of moving.

And they hope that a good number of Camarillo State employees transfer with them to help with that transition.

“My daughter says she’s not going to Fairview and that’s the end of it and she doesn’t want to hear any more about it,” Allen said. “So it’s really, really crucial for the staff to be here when they come.”