A place to turn to

Growing up in the cornfields of Indiana, Dale Fitch never imagined he end up in California.

He expected to start a family, plow a farm and live happily in the Midwestern fields.

Now he spends his days as a shepherd for the area’s homeless in an experiment that started out with setting out a pot of coffee for them that has grown in to a temporary shelter and a major food distribution center.

It all started after he fell from grace as the pastor of a Nazarene church in Maywood, the victim of his own sexual addictions. He sought help from a New Life treatment center in Anaheim and then, injudiciously, agreed to appear on Geraldo Rivera’s talk show. The producers were supposed to mask the guests, but apparently didn’t do a good enough job and when the church elders found out they suspended him.

For three years he worked with his mentors to regain his status.

“I had no problem with any of it. I felt it was fair,” he says.

Part of his redemption then in the early ’90s led him in 1992 to work as a chaplain at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles.

The biggest lesson was the power of treating the homeless as equals to restore their dignity.

“One of the things that happens to people on the street is they lose their identity,” he said. “One of the things we try to do is just get acquainted. Sometimes just listening to them makes all the difference in the world.”

He’s seen some of the area’s wealthiest people volunteer at the Lighthouse, an exchange that powerfully affected them as well as the homeless.

“They serve the food, set the table and some even brought their children,” Fitch said. “I really see what we do as two-fold. It gives the experience to those not homeless to help them have a sense they can make a difference.”

Fitch came to the Lighthouse in 1999, working part time.

He became the full-time pastor in 2002. In March of that year he felt compelled to help the area’s homeless and started with the lesson he learned at the Union Rescue — he set out a pot of coffee, opened the doors and invited the homeless in to get better acquainted.

“It was also to allow them to have a safe place off the street,” he said.

Then the deluge of donated clothes and food started. Some grateful guests asked if there was something they could do. “Sure, I’ve got all these clothes that need sorting out,” he told them.