Community Corner

Classmate of Hillary Clinton Launches Mission to Fix Neighborhood 'Disaster'

Garry Puda decided it was easier to recruit labor and materials than continue complaining to City Hall about eyesore across from him on Heidi Street.

A high school classmate of Hillary Clinton is using shuttle diplomacy to solve a 15-year-old problem in his neighborhood—a house across the way he calls a “disaster.” 

Garry Puda of Heidi Street in north La Mesa—who knew the secretary of state (then Hillary Rodham) at a Park Ridge, IL, school in the 1960s—decided to call a truce over the home with serious roof and other structural problems.

“It’s bothered me for years and years,” Puda, 62, said of the peeling-paint home at the corner of Heidi Street and Whitehead Place. “It was getting worse and worse.”

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Starting 10 years ago, he began complaining to City Hall—to little avail. Eventually he reached out and helped the homeowner—basketball coach Roger Moses—with some fence and gate repairs.

Drivers passing the eyesore even thanked him because “they thought I was the owner,” said Puda, a 35-year resident of Heidi Street.

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But the roof began leaking, and Moses—depicted by Puda as shy talking about his  plight—resorted to using plastic sheets to keep the rains at bay. The garage door began falling apart as well.

Deciding that it would “take less effort to fix it than complain about it,” Puda said he and his wife, Mary, and neighbors Fred and Patty Angulo in January launched what they call The Heidi Street Makeover—including an e-mail address of the same name using his Cox account. They have been making the rounds of neighbors and local firms nailing down commitments of time and materials.

“Through business, I know the possibility of getting things done,” said Puda, a former South Bay schoolteacher who runs a Mexican pottery business out of his home office.

First he needed the OK of Roger and Sandra Moses.  After a week, they agreed to a local version of the ABC home makeover show—but without the vacation trip.

“They picked out the color styles” for the remodeled house, Puda said.

His goal then became gathering business donations of material—and not requiring any cash from his neighbors.

With the Argulos, he canvassed the neighborhood and found 21 neighbors willing to offer elbow grease. One neighbor was so excited, she likened the project to “an old-fashioned barn raising,” Puda said. He originally thought the work would take two weekends starting this month.

Then reality hit home.

As he began contacting potential donors, he learned they would funnel help to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (for tax-deduction purposes) but not give him money outright.

Setting up a nonprofit from scratch could take a year, he said, so now he’s looking for a partner organization already set up to accept donations.

Puda said he’s working to secure such a partner while going down a checklist of local firms for donated gear, including EDCO for use of a trash Dumpster and a tree-trimming service to bring down five trees on the property, including two tall palms. Some bushes also must be removed, since they obscure the intersection for motorists, he said. Artificial turf would replace weeds and overgrown shrubs.

Puda also said the city might waive the cost of building permits for the work, and he’s been in touch with Chris Gonzales, community development program coordinator, and city building inspectors and code compliance officers.

According to a civil complaint filed in December 2009, the city sued Roger and Sandra Moses to abate a public nuisance. (See attached document.)

“On or about June 17, 2009, and thereafter,” said the lawsuit filed in East County  Superior Court, “the city gave written notice to Moses to remedy the violations. ... Despite repeated efforts to obtain voluntary compliance, including extensions of time, Moses has failed and refused to abate the nuisance and continue to use and maintain the real property in [an] illegal manner.”

In January 2010, Sandra Moses wrote the city a 415-word letter saying in part:

The City of La Mesa filed suit against me and my husband because our house is not maintained to their standards. That is because there is no money to do the repairs the City of La Mesa would like to have done. We would like the repairs to be done too, but cannot afford to do them. How suing someone with no money is supposed to create the money to alleviate the offense that caused the lawsuit in the first place is beyond my ability to understand.

Sandra Moses told the city she couldn’t afford a lawyer and received no response to her requests about free legal assistance.

She concluded: “We are not able to respond to court demands because we have no money. We understand the court and the city will proceed to steamroll ahead and we are powerless to stop them because we have no money.”

On Aug. 20, 2010, assistant city attorney Gregory Lusitana sought dismissal of the case “without prejudice.” Four days later, the case was dismissed, signed by a court clerk.

Wednesday night, before La Mesa Patch obtained court documents, community development director Bill Chopyk said: “This code compliance case was turned over to the city attorney.”

He said he and City Attorney Glenn Sabine “must confer …  to determine the status of the case” before they could answer La Mesa Patch questions about what city codes were being violated and what penalties the Moseses faced.

Roger Moses coached basketball at MiraCosta College in Oceanside and Palomar College in San Marcos and led an AAU team called the San Diego Swishers.  But in 2007-08 at Fallbrook High School, his girls team had a 0-19 record.

In 2003, however, he was named conference Coach of the Year after his Palomar Comets won a share of the league championship.

EastCountySports.com reported: “Moses performed a similar feat when he resurrected a doormat Grossmont College program in the early 1990s and captured a PCC championship.”

“I’m kinda proud to be the only coach ever to win a championship in this conference at two different schools,” Moses was quoted at saying.

Despite his coaching success, Moses has fallen on hard times.

“He’s been unemployed,” Puda said, even as Moses’ only child—a daughter—is nearing graduation from San Diego State University.  An aunt in Arizona is very ill and requires expensive in-home help,  further straining Moses’ wallet.

Puda now hopes to begin repairs in mid-June. He’s posted a list of items he needs—including a roll-up garage door and retainer wall bricks—and hopes corporate sponsors will come through.

But one person he won’t tap for help is the former first lady, his classmate at Maine East High School in a Chicago suburb in the late 1960s. Puda recalls Hillary Rodham as being involved in “millions” of clubs. (The same school in 1960 produced another celebrity—the actor Harrison Ford.)

Puda is disappointed in the time it’s taking to line up donors and sort out logistics, but said of the vexing neighborhood problem: “That’s 15 years. What’s a few more months?”

Story updated 8:40 p.m. Feb. 25, 2011


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