Luncheon Focuses on Center’s Need

Wanted: Site/250 beds, addnl. space 25 cribs. Cntact. Dr. Agnes Trinchero or John Rau, Florence Crittenton Services/Orange County.

“Pass the word,” said Dr. Agnes Trinchero, director of the Florence Crittenton Residential Treatment Center for troubled adolescent girls. “We need to relocate. We need to expand.”

Trinchero was one of 350 guests at a St. Patrick’s Day luncheon and fashion show last week at The Newporter Resort that raised $20,000 for the Treatment Center. Between sips of grog, she and agency board president John Rau outlined a desperate situation.

“We’re absolutely full,” Rau said. “We can take about 50 girls. We limit our waiting list to 30, but it could be 200. . . . If you hear of a site that could hold 250 beds for the girls, with additional land to set up a program with another 25 or 30 beds for babies. . . .

“We’ve been taking babies from Orangewood (Children’s Home), 18-month-old toddlers to 3-year-old’s, who have never been hugged or loved or anything--to say nothing of what has been done to them. They have no space for them there--they’re parked in cribs, they’re lying on mats in the conference room.”

Trinchero elaborated.

“Orangewood ran out of space practically the day it opened,” she said. “I’ve talked to (child advocate) Bill Steiner, who said they’ve never seen so many children of that tiny age as they have now. (Steiner resigned Wednesday as director of the Orangewood Home to become executive director of the private Orangewood Foundation, which was instrumental in constructing the facility.)

“We’ve all run out of people interested in foster care. Now with both mother and father working, most families don’t want a child that needs that much constant care. The county has asked us to please take on some of these babies.”

But Rau pointed out that this cloud has had a very real silver lining.

“Only about half the girls at Crittenton are pregnant or have babies,” he said. “For the others, the situation has brought about an amazing synergy. They get a chance to love something, to be important to somebody after having been abused and made to feel like nothing all their lives. The baby in turn gets somebody loving them and hugging them and taking care of them.

“It’s a win-win situation. Nobody’s getting care at the cost of somebody else.”

As a result of a fall in her home and subsequent hospitalization, event chairman Zada Taylor could not attend. Her duties were assumed by co-chair Margo Maib. Jennie Isford arranged for a showing of spring designer fashions from Neiman-Marcus that had the room abuzz.

The Innisfree musicians entertained with Irish melodies before lunch.

“Goldfish!” said Karen Betson, president of the Sound of Music chapter of the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“Real live scuba divers!” exclaimed chapter member Sue Barlow.

“Seaweed?” pondered Bari Tulving. “Won’t it smell?”

Tulving and her husband Hannes treated 38 couples to an elegant five-course underwriters’ dinner at the Center Club in Costa Mesa on Tuesday night. Each of the couples had donated $1,000 or more toward the chapter’s upcoming Atlantis Ball, which will be held April 19 at the Newport Marriott. The women were obviously excited about decoration plans for the affair.

“Shells, mermaids--it all gives me goose bumps,” Betson said.

More than $54,000 was donated in all; dinner co-chair Sally Lorenat nevertheless said it might have been more.

“The Center campaign solicited all our patrons and members for the big contributions,” Lorenat confided. “We lost a lot to that. They chose to make their contributions in that way because then they get preferential tickets (to Center events).

“Still, we got a good response. Our approach was, this is the year of the Center and this will be our last fund-raiser prior to the grand opening.” Lorenat admitted there would continue to be plenty of fund-raisers after the opening. But, “we hoped that they wouldn’t think about that (during this year’s solicitations).”

Bari Tulving appeared in a gown of white fox tails and crushed velvet by star-dresser Ellene Warren. “Of course, by Ellene Warren,” said Tulving, who seems to have single-handedly championed the provocative Los Angeles-based designer in Orange County. “She’s all I’ll buy for formal events.”

Hannes Tulving, who made his fortune in rare coin investments, most notably silver dollars, is a mere 30 years old. Even so, when tablemate Judy Duke toasted “the kids,” she was referring not to her hosts, but to the Tulvings’ seven Persian cats.

Lorenat’s co-chair was Martha Green. Also among the guests were Walter and Gerri Schroeder, underwriters of the dinner the past two years, who recently celebrated their 40th anniversary.

Service for 500 would seem to dictate a keep-it-simple approach, fare understandably less than imaginative. But at Cuisine Fantasy--a buffet dinner featuring 18 county restaurants and half a dozen wineries--several cuisiniers refused to be intimidated.

The party, held Sunday night in South Coast Plaza’s Jewel Court, was jointly sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society’s Irvine and Las Canciones committees. According to benefit co-chair Colleen Evers, $14,000 was raised for music education programs for youth. The cost was $35 per person.

For openers, Copa de Oro of Costa Mesa offered blue corn nachos with roasted duck, black beans and chipotle , and green chili goat cheese tartlets with roasted pine nuts. Not to be outdone, Morell’s, located in the Irvine Hilton, prepared lotte wrapped in cabbage with lobster sauce.

Recipes such as these, in fact, crowned a weekend of imagination for many of those present. According to Irvine Committee chairman Mitzi Tonai, women’s committee members served as docents at the Imagination Celebration, a two-week, countywide, hands-on arts festival for children that began Saturday at South Coast Village. Their volunteer duties continue Saturday at the Mission Viejo Mall.

Jewel Court hung heavy with little more than the sounds of chewing for the first portion of the evening. “Well, there’s no music!” astutely observed Joyce Reaume, Philharmonic Society Women’s Committees vice chairman.

That was soon remedied, however, by the band California Sound, joined by Philharmonic-sponsored talent that included vocalist Kara McDermott, 19, of Fullerton, 15-year-old drum virtuoso Josh Freese--he’s the son of Disneyland’s manager of talent casting, Stan Freese--and 14-year-old harpist Alicia Mew, daughter of benefit co-chairman Liz Mew.

Using no decibels at all, mime Clyde Dodge gave committees chairman Jane Grier a fright when she tried to move past what she had thought was a prop.