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Buz Velto--reaching outof Reach Out(Editor's Note: First in a series of articles concerning Reach Out West End, a youth crisis center.)Everyone in the world needs to feel worthwhile, according to Buz Velto. Buz is a nineteen-year-old Upland man not necessarily wise beyond his years. He has learned in the last few months how important feeling worthwhile can be.Buz is a resident house manager at Reach Out West End, 404 West D” Street, Ontario. For the first time in his life he is doing exactly what he likes and 'people like what I can do.”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 oi listening to the 35 or more people from 7 to 70 who come to Reach Out every evening looking for some kind ofreassurance, some kind of answers to their problems, Buz Velto has found new direction for his own life. He can't wait to enter Chaffey College next month as a psychology major so he can spend the rest of his life at Reach Out or some place like it.jivea my way through. He wasstill jiving ' the first time bevisited Reach Out West End.But then he encountered an enthusiastic young counselor named Frank Romo, also of Upland, who was not taken iu 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 wasBuz never liked school. He says out, he was ready to move in ashe got through high school, but I an assistant house manager.He had not planned to go to college when he moved into the house at 414 West 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 talk to and the sixteen-year-old boy who wasgoing to commit suicide if hisgirl no longer loved him. Buzwas set on fire with the need for college and more and faster answers.arewhatShowing people that they really worthwhile, that's Reach Out West End is all about. Buz Velto thinks he can do that. He at least has found his own answers.Vi I/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 Upland residents, Bradford and Velto 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, also of Upland, to whom both the younger men give credit for waking us up” to life.
Newspaper Details
Upland News
Upland, California, US
Thu, Sep 02, 1971
Page 33
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 02 Apr 2019
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