A New Beginning for Rescue Mission

After enduring fire, floods and windstorms--not to mention a struggle to raise money--the Ventura County Rescue Mission inaugurated its new building Thursday to the cheers of more than 50 donors and homeless men.

“It feels very good because it is going to give the people here the same opportunity I had,” said Sparky Centeno, a mission resident who helped build the $1.3-million structure. “It’s nice to see all of it come to completion.”

Centeno and dozens of other rescue mission clients worked daily for more than a year, from 5 a.m to late afternoon pouring concrete and hammering wood panels for their new home.

The 20,000-square-foot Spanish-style building, located at the site where it was destroyed in a fire five years ago, will house 100 homeless men and 50 men in the drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, said director Carol Roberg.

The building on 6th Street in Oxnard has cool tile flooring, spacious living quarters and a large kitchen.

The new mission will also house an expanded computer learning center, and construction could begin by fall on a women’s and children’s shelter a few miles away, Roberg said.

Centeno said he owes his life to the mission, where, in nine months, he was able to pull out of a 13-year cocaine habit.

“I tried to [quit] on my own and I couldn’t do it,” Centeno said. “Now, that desire is gone.”

But it was only five years ago that many of the shelter’s clients watched as their few belongings and the only roof available to them burned to the ground.

“We watched it burn and it was one of those moments where you say, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ ” said Steve Ebbings, who was living at the mission’s drug and alcohol center at the time.

For a few months, the homeless men who lived at the Rescue Mission wandered from church to church in Oxnard, then they lived in tents donated by the Port Hueneme Navy base. But during a windstorm in the winter of 1996, their tents were blown to shreds.

So the men slept on mattresses in the mission’s chapel.

Despite these setbacks, Roberg said they kept their eyes on the prize, plugging through with construction, hoping to complete it this year just in time for the rescue mission’s 25th anniversary.

Roberg said the majority of the funds came from private donors like churches, businesses and individuals.

But, she added, more money needs to be raised.

“We have only raised $800,000 and we are hoping that the word will get out,” Roberg said. “It’s tough. Everybody is vying for the nonprofit dollars in this county.”

The rescue mission--which offers on-site drug and alcohol rehabilitation, job training and medical care--is one of the largest shelters in the county.

Established in 1972 as the Oxnard Rescue Mission, it has also provided free meals and helped thousands of men whose lives were lost to drug and alcohol.

Ebbings, who said he tried a variety of drugs, is a testament to how the rescue mission can help turn lives around.

“Before I came, I was pretty hopeless,” he said. “I was suicidal and I felt like I wasn’t worth anything.”

Today, Ebbings is the rescue mission’s chaplain who counsels the men suffering from the addictions he knew.

In addition to the rescue mission’s rehabilitation program, the shelter serves hot meals to 300 to 400 men, women and children each day. This past Thanksgiving, shelter organizers fed hundreds of Ventura County residents on makeshift picnic tables, offering turkey, pumpkin pie and stuffing.

The mission’s doors will open in five weeks to give the management time to settle in and organize the new living situation.

“We are very excited,” Roberg said. “We can’t wait to open it up.”