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Buz Velto--reachingat Reach OutBY PAULINE TIFFANY(Editor's Note: First n a series of articles joncerrting Reach Out West End, a youth crisis:enter.)Everyone in the world needs to feel worthwhile, according to Buz Velto, Buz is a nineteen^year-old, not necessarily wise beyond his years. He has learned in the last few months how important feeling worthwhile can be.Buz is a resident housemanager at Reach OutWest End, 404 West D St., Ontario. For the first time in his life he is doing exactly what he likes and “people like what 1 cando.He conducts living room rap sessions, answers the no-heat line, a 24-hour crisis prevention telephone service, from midnight to 7 a.m., and helps keep the two-story converted residence clean.A year ago when Buz first saw the inside of Reach Out, he thought it would be “good for laughs.” No longer.After a year of listening to the 35 or more people from 7 to 70 who come to Reach Out every evening looking for some kindof reassurance, some kind of answers to their problems, Buz Velto has found new direction for his own life. He will work on a psychology major so he can spend the rest of his life at Reach Out or some place like it.Buz never liked school. He says he got through high school, But I jived my way through. He was still jiving the first time he visited Reach OutWest End.But then he encountered an enthusiastic young counselor named Frank Romo, who was not taken in by his jiving. He returned partly out of anger and partly out of curiosity. He saw something of himself in Frank Romo, and he was not sure at first whether he liked it or not. _After the first few visits, he began to realize that like Frank, he could relate to the troubled young who came to Reach Out because they were bored, or lonely, kicked out of their house, or even hooked on drugs. By the time school was out at that time, he was ready to move in as an assistant house manager.He had not planned to go to college when he moved into the house at 414 Westw mReach OutSteve Bradford and Buz Velto, house managers at Reach Out West End, really do appear to be reaching out to each other in the midst of heated conversation in an informal rap session. Both young men have found new direction to their lives by working with the troubled young people who come to Reach Out for help. In background is Reach Out counselor Frank Romo, to whom both the younger men give credit for “waking us up” to life.“D” Street. Somewhere between June and August, between the young mother who blamed herself because her daughter was using drugs and the young man who never in his life met anyone he could talkto and the sixteen-ycar-old boy who was going to commit suicide if his girlno longer loved him, Buz was set on fire with the need for college and more and faster answers.Showing people that they are really worthwhile, that’s what Reach Out West End is all about. Buz Velto thinks he can do that. He at least has found his own answers.
Newspaper Details
Montclair Tribune
Montclair, California, US
Thu, Nov 11, 1971
Page 3
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 02 Apr 2019
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