Community Corner

Diocese Gives St. Isidore Church a Reprieve

Residents have three more years to try to raise enough money to save the city's oldest building and community hub.

When the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange closed the doors of St. Isidore Church in 1999 because it was too expensive for earthquake retrofitting, it seemed like the final chapter for Los Alamitos’ oldest and most storied building.

As it turns out, however, it’s easy to lock the doors but impossible to hold back the community.

In the 12 years since, the St. Isidore Historic Plaza has been home to hundreds of food drives, festivals, wedding receptions, tutoring sessions, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Boy Scout events and more. For many residents, St. Isidore’s is the hub and the heart of the community. Instead of letting it go, they formed the nonprofit Comite Del Amor to raise money to buy the church and its hall, restore it as a historic landmark and open its doors again as a nondenominational church. Although they haven’t yet raised enough money to buy the church, they have made it hard for the diocese to sell it to the highest bidder.

Find out what's happening in Los Alamitos-Seal Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This month, the diocese granted the church another reprieve. It extended a deadline for the community to come up with a $250,000 down payment on the $1.2-million property. The residents now have until 2014 to come up with the money.

“We went to the monsignor and asked for the extension because, in this economic climate, it’s hard to raise that kind of money,” said Maria Teresa Diaz, president of the nonprofit’s board. “We showed them all we are doing for the community.”

Find out what's happening in Los Alamitos-Seal Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

On the second and third Saturdays of each month, the group donates food and clothing to families in need who line up at 6 a.m. to receive enough staples to get by for weeks, Diaz said.

Three afternoons a week, retired educators Jelica and Jose Campos offer free afterschool tutoring to children, she added. They bring snacks for the children and supplement their homework with demonstrations and science experiments.

Community groups use the plaza’s refurbished hall nearly every day.

Some have criticized the strategy of donating facilities, time, money and energy back to the community rather than focusing it all on fundraising efforts to buy the church.

But the community involvement is the church’s legacy, said Tanya Barraza, who grew up attending the church and now holds tamale-making workshops to help raise money for the church.

“Anything that was going on in the community—it started here,” Barraza said. “Everything revolved around St. Isidore’s."

Established in the early 1920s and rebuilt in 1933 after an earthquake, the church was built by Hispanic sugar cane field hands and Belgian dairy farmers. It was always a multicultural parish, and generations of Los Alamitos’ oldest families held baptisms, weddings and funerals at St. Isidore’s, Barraza said.

“It was just a warm and happy place to have grown up, to have lived your life,” said Barraza. “It’s part of the community—I guess you could say our heart."

Letting go of the church is not something Barraza is ready to do.

“It just breaks my heart to think that this might go away,” she said. “We can’t let that happen.”

Located on Katella Avenue near the Los Alamitos Medical Center, St. Isidore stands out as an aging mission-style building.

It’s small and has a modest interior, except for the spectacular and intricate stained-glass windows donated by early Los Alamitos families. It also has a choir balcony where Los Alamitos resident Daniel Aguilar used to sneak up and get into mischief during mass as a little boy seven decades ago before raising his own children in the parish. Today, he is the church’s caretaker. He preserves it for the day when it will again open its doors for baptisms, weddings and first Holy Communions for the next generation of mischievous little boys.

“I have so many memories here,” Aguilar said. “I am like a lot of people—it makes me mad that the church [diocese] only cares about selling it and making money.”

Saving St. Isidore has become a mission even for those who didn’t grow up attending mass there.

“It’s the oldest building in our community, and it’s beautiful,” said City Councilwoman Marilynn Poe. “It’s part of our history.”

A member of the nonprofit’s board, Poe has seen major fundraising strides in the last six months, she said. The group has hired a professional fundraiser to help organize events.

“It’s a hard time to raise money, but things are really picking up, and we are getting a lot of donations,” said Poe. “We need big support right now.”


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here