Can’t Phone Home : Despite Efforts, Area Near Palmdale Remains Unwired

EAST AVENUE O â€”  One night last June, a rattlesnake sank its fangs into Debbie Robinson’s hand while she was watering the lawn outside her desert home, about 25 miles east of Palmdale. Robinson, a 43-year-old bus driver, became dizzy and nauseated as the deadly venom spread.

She had no one to turn to--her only companions that night were her four dogs and 50 chickens. Her husband was away.

She was more alone than almost anyone in the modern-day United States. Robinson lives in one of the few outposts of Los Angeles County that still lacks telephone service.

“I had the shakes real bad,� Robinson recalled. “I knew that if I did nothing, I was going to die. If I’d had a phone, I could have dealt with it in a few minutes.�

Robinson’s life was saved because her husband pulled into the driveway just as she was going into convulsions. He drove her to the nearest pay phone--five miles away--and summoned paramedics. A helicopter whisked her to a hospital in Lancaster for anti-venom treatments.

Robinson is just fine now, and more committed than ever to a longstanding campaign to get phone lines extended to this unnamed rural area. About two dozen families live on and near East Avenue O, the only paved road in the isolated neighborhood.

But the efforts of these residents--living in domiciles ranging from the Robinsons’ cozy converted general store to rundown mobile homes--have been thwarted for more than 10 years by costly connection fees, bureaucratic bungling and squabbling among the neighbors themselves.

At a time when people all over the country are plugging their fax machines, modems and voice-mail systems into the information superhighway, the Robinsons would settle for a simple dial tone.

“People say: ‘Where could you possibly live where there’s no phone?’ � says Debbie Robinson’s husband, John, a 44-year-old construction worker. “People just won’t accept it.�

“Everyone relates everyone to a phone number,� adds Debbie. “If you don’t have a phone, you’re not worth much.�

*

John Crutsinger came here in 1943, paying $30 an acre for a piece of the world that he thought would allow him to live a safe distance from urban life. He dug a well, built a house and moved from a neighborhood near Downtown Los Angeles.

“I wanted to get away from all that I lived with down there,� says Crutsinger, now 85. Even the few neighbors he now has are too many. And the thought of Palmdale being only a short drive away is no comfort. “Pretty soon, they all moved here anyway,� he says.

John Miller, 65, lives nearby with his wife, Cora, in a house that has three large boats in the yard. Miller, a former aerospace worker who moved here in 1985, says a Palmdale man paid him to store the vessels, then abandoned the boats and moved to Florida.

The Millers’ house is surrounded by a wall made of thousands of old automobile tires. The wall is there to keep out the sand and tumbleweeds, and also to a certain extent, the outside world.

“Right now, what do you hear?� asks Miller standing in the yard. “Just the wind blowing. There it is.�

Just about the only outside visitors are dune buggy riders and motorcyclists who sometimes trespass onto the property. He keeps a handgun close by.

“We don’t get trash (collection), we don’t get the telephones, we don’t get cable TV,� he says. “We don’t get a good response from the Sheriff’s Department. You have to be self-sufficient out here.�

The Robinsons moved to East Avenue O a decade ago, assuming phone service was available. “When we looked at the place, there was a phone book on the floor,� Debbie Robinson recalls. “We never gave it a second thought.�

In reality, people in the area had to drive to the nearest town, Lake Los Angeles, and use pay phones beside the Saddleback Market or Burger Basket to make calls.

When they asked the phone company about establishing service to their home, the Robinsons were told it would cost them $13,000 up front just to have the lines extended. They and other residents have considered cellular phones over the years, but they feel the fees charged for both incoming and outgoing calls are prohibitive.

Duane Filer, supervisor of the California Public Utility Commission’s consumer affairs branch, has heard complaints from other residents of remote areas who do not have telephone service. But he dismisses paying the costs, telephone service would be extended to all 18 households. To those not able to afford the hookup fees, this was arguments that telephone companies should automatically provide these neighborhoods with service.

“They moved out there,� Filer says of the residents in phoneless areas, “so they’re going to have to pay the expense to bring service there.�

Pacific Bell and GTE officials say the few unwired neighborhoods that still exist in Los Angeles County are mainly in the sparsely populated far northern desert areas, such as along East Avenue O.

If these residents ask for service, the phone companies will provide the first 750 to 1,000 feet of line for free. After that, they charge state-approved fees that add up to thousands of dollars per mile.

The utilities insist that they are only covering their labor and equipment costs. If they discounted these prices, they say, city and suburban customers would be subsidizing the cost of hooking up more isolated households--a practice the state Public Utilities Commission frowns upon.

The 1990 United States Census found that only 3.4% of Los Angeles County’s 3.2 million households had no phones.

This study did not determine how many of those households were in areas where no telephone service was available.

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Even the most die-hard of isolationists along East Avenue O now consider a telephone a necessity of life.

Relatives complain they are too tough to contact. Employers must signal them via pagers or wait for them to call in. Suspicious cashiers are loathe to accept a check from a customer who has no home phone number.

A much more urgent reason to have atelephone is for medical emergencies. John Miller has undergone two heart bypass operations, and his health remains fragile. He says he sometimes passes out from overexertion while working in his yard. “I’d like to have a phone because I’m getting to the point where I’m scared,� he says.

To reduce the cost, he says he once offered to install the roadside phone lines himself, but the telephone company refused to let him.

An old-fashioned mobile phone system gives him limited access to the outside world. It occupies a corner of his living room, where the walls are adorned with black velvet sword and sorcery paintings, an Elvis Presley clock and a framed Elvis Presley gold record.

The gold record was a birthday gift for wife Cora, an Elvis fan who commutes 25 miles to work as a Palmdale restaurant hostess. When she arrives or leaves work, she can signal her husband through his pager, which costs $19 a month.

The Millers use their mobile phone, which is subject to interference from other radio sets, sparingly. Even so, their September bill was $102, and previous ones have topped $200.

Up the road, Crutsinger says he didn’t miss having a telephone until 10 years ago when his wife suffered a stroke and he had to send a friend for help. When he later asked the telephone company about getting hooked up, he says he was quoted a price of $22,000. “I couldn’t afford that,� he says.

More recently, he tried a cellular phone for a month but found it far too expensive. “The bill was $225 or something like that,� he says. “I found out that every time you touch that thing it costs you money. I turned it off.�

Crutsinger’s wife, who never fully recovered from the stroke, is now in a nursing facility in the Las Vegas area near their daughter. Crutsinger says that without a telephone, he cannot often check on her medical status.

After repeated inquiries, Pacific Bell offered in January to hook up 18 households in this area if all of the families signed up for service--and each kicked in $965 up front.

Six months later the plan was abandoned because only the Robinsons and five other families had paid.

Debbie Robinson pressed the phone company to come up with a less ambitious proposal. A revised plan was devised, but there was confusion about just what it offered.

As the Robinsons understood the revised plan, they and three other families would each chip in about $4,300 to get the lines extended to their houses.

But in a July 15 letter, Pacific Bell announced that with these four families paying the costs, telephone service would be extended to all 18 households. To those not able to afford the hookup fees, this was a godsend.

Dorothy Kubon, who lives off a dirt road just west of Crutsinger’s house, raises dachshunds and nurtures a rock and cactus garden. She relies on a citizens band radio when she needs help.

“We’re not out here because we’re loaded,� Kubon says. “We’re just average yokels.�

Another nearby resident who would have gotten a free phone hookup was Humberto Moro, a sewing machine repairman who speaks limited English. His daughter Katia, a college student, said phone service would be a big help because family members now have to hurry to the pay phones when traffic accidents occur near the house.

But the Robinsons and the other paying families were outraged that they were expected to subsidize the establishment of telephone service, and they refused to pay.

“Have you ever wanted something really bad, and you could finally afford it--but only if you bought one for everyone else on the block?� Debbie Robinson said, fuming.

After inquiries by The Times, Pacific Bell said that it had misunderstood the intentions of the paying families and that the July 15 letter was in error. The company sent a technician back to the desert to recalculate the cost of running lines only to the Robinsons and the other households willing to pay for the installation.

Their most recent proposal puts the total cost at $14,150. So far, the only ones willing to pay a share of that are the Robinsons, the Millers and Crutsinger. That comes to about $4,700 per household.

It’s a steep price for the Robinsons, but Debbie says she is determined to get the funds, even if they have to take out a loan.

“One way or another,� she says, “I’m going to get a phone.�

No Service

An unnamed rural outpost in the eastern Antelope Valley, home to about a dozen families, is one of the few communities in Los Angeles County with no phone service. (graphic)