Davis teens may have left their mark on residents of South Central Los Angeles this summer, but their week of community service left them changed as well.

The teens, all members of the Davis United Methodist Church youth group, spent a week in the low-income area of Los Angeles, helping residents with a variety of projects, from building wheelchair ramps and reflooring a kitchen to painting interiors and exteriors of houses.

They also spent part of one day in “Skid Row,” an area of Los Angeles known for a homeless population that numbers between 3,000 and 5,000 people. There the teens handed out water bottles and took the time to get to know some of the residents.

“I’ve never seen so many homeless in one place,” said Douglas Layson, 16.

Added Ricky Pacciorini: “Imagine walking in downtown Davis and everywhere you look, on either side of you, there are homeless. That’s how it was.”

The purpose of the visit, said youth minister Sarah Zils, “was to break down stereotypes … to get to know them as human beings. Get rid of the idea that all these people are bad and dangerous and below us.”

It worked.

“It was amazing because I didn’t ever feel that I was in danger,” said Hannah Tutt, 14. “I saw they were just people.”

“One guy I talked to said, ‘I may live in Skid Row, but Skid Row doesn’t live in me,’ ” Pacciorini said.

The visit to Skid Row is a regular component of Sierra Service Project, a Carmichael-based organization that sponsors weeklong summer community service projects.

When the Davis contingent arrived in Los Angeles in July, they took up where previous groups had left off. At one house, for example, the volunteers had been painstakingly stripping lead-based paint from the walls. The Davis teens began the repainting process.

Pacciorini, meanwhile, spent his week removing layer upon layer of linoleum flooring in another house’s kitchen, while Tutt helped build a wheelchair ramp for a recent high school graduate left paralyzed by a stroke.

The residents of the homes they worked on were so appreciative, the teens said.

It was the second such trip for some of them.

Pacciorini and Layson both traveled with the youth group to New Orleans last year, where they helped fix up a home left uninhabitable by Hurricane Katrina. The resident had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her one wish was to be able to live out the rest of her life in her own home.

“It was her dying wish,” Zils noted.

Said Pacciorini: “It was a really great feeling to be able to help her.

“It’s really humbling, too,” he added. “It makes you a better person.”

It was that sense of accomplishment that led Pacciorini and others to travel to Los Angeles this summer for a similar week of service.

Zils, who has been the youth minister at the United Methodist Church for two years, says she plans to organize a week of service for the teens every summer.

“It’s a huge pillar of our church to give back like that,” she said. “And our members are all over the place giving back.”

Even those who didn’t accompany the youth group to Los Angeles helped make the trip possible, by ensuring through contributions that everyone who wanted to go had the money to do so.

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or (530) 747-8051.

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