Thriving in the Limelight

BUENA PARK — As dozens of homeless men and women faced eviction from his church shelter last week, pastor Wiley S. Drake, cell phone in hand, dashed through a gantlet of TV cameras to a limo sent by a CBS news program in Los Angeles.

“I’m going to Hollywood,” he shouted gleefully over his shoulder to shelter tenant Mike Turner, who has become his aide-de-camp. The scene was classic Drake: The Arkansas native, 53, ran away to the rodeo as a boy and has sought the spotlight ever since.

Critics say Drake, who also orchestrated the recent Southern Baptist boycott against Disneyland, cares more about getting his name in print and face on television than he does about his causes, which have ranged from protesting gay-friendly policies at Disneyland to picketing stores that sell pornography to protecting the homeless.

“That man never met a camera he didn’t like,” said Gregory P. Palmer, assistant prosecutor for Buena Park and Drake’s chief nemesis in his two-year fight against city planners.

The blustery, silver-haired preacher at First Southern Baptist Church here admits he adores media attention but says he’s driven in this case by a calling from God.

“People say I’ve got a martyr complex. I don’t care,” Drake said, his voice rising as his eyes began to shine with tears. “They say I’m trying to get in the press, and I do love it, every minute of it. But I don’t care what they say. I’ll never send anyone off my property again.”

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Friday morning, dressed in his characteristic white shirt, black suspenders and red Statue of Liberty tie, Drake sat at a folding table littered with cookie crumbs and newspaper clippings. For two hours, between media phone calls and interruptions by former and current shelter tenants who relate to Drake like a father, the pastor told his life story.

Born to a poor Arkansas farmer 15 miles from President Clinton’s former home, he grew up without electricity or indoor plumbing. He was a rebel in school, flunked the ninth grade and left soon after to travel with a rodeo and circus show.

He joined the Navy at 17, married a year later, served two tours in Vietnam, fathered three children and experienced a “religious conversion”--all within five years.

For another decade, Drake drifted in and out of being an observant Christian, studying theology one year, working in a marketing job the next. During one of those secular periods, he said, he took up drinking and cocaine, and lost his job.

Once again, he was “reborn.” Drake took his family back to Arkansas, where he drove a school bus and ran a Bible camp. Then, in 1984, he became pastor of a small Baptist church in Bloomberg, Texas.

Three years later, after doggedly pursuing a California job, he became pastor of the Buena Park church.

Many programs he runs for the poor--the daily morning bread giveaway, the Wednesday night suppers and the Saturday morning breakfasts--were in place when he took over the thriving congregation, Drake said.

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Then he told an emotional story of how he came to champion the homeless--a story he has told to countless reporters.

Seven years ago, he said, he found an old drunk sleeping in a church walkway. He chased him away and then opened his Bible to a passage that seemed to chastise him for his coldheartedness. Drake searched for the man for hours, but the drunk had disappeared.

“I’ll never forget the way he looked at me,” Drake said.

Since then, he said, he has helped hundreds of homeless men and women get back on their feet and find work.

Marlene Taylor, a 42-year-old Fullerton resident who was homeless for two years, said she couldn’t have made it without Drake’s help.

Taylor said Drake fed her, clothed her, allowed her to take showers and stay at the church and put her in touch with a temporary employment agency from which she got a job at a plastics company.

“Once you get down in that gutter, if you don’t have someone to give you a helping hand up, you’re not going to get out,” Taylor said. “The reverend helped me unconditionally.”

Taylor now rents a small apartment in Fullerton and spends her days off working at the shelter.

“I’ve seen so many miracles come through here, and the reverend is the reason,” Taylor said.

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Drake says the city has done everything in its power to prevent him from doing God’s work.

In early 1996, after neighbors complained that the church parking lot was crowded with old campers and vans and about a dozen tents, city inspectors decided he was violating zoning laws, and the battle between Drake and Buena Park began.

The stories told by former church members and neighbors of the worn, cream-colored building differ substantially from Drake’s. Several said the pastor sought controversy and conflict when it seemed counterproductive.

“He could have had the shelter up and running a year ago if he had just done what the city wanted,” said Jeri Miller, who lives across the street from the church and once belonged to the congregation. “He’s done everything to sabotage it just to get in the media.”

Miller said that when she joined the church nine years ago, it had about 300 members, a choir and a preschool. Her husband, Russell, taught Sunday school.

But in the last two years, she said, Drake closed the preschool and drove away most of the long-standing members while baptizing more and more of the homeless, who became church members.

When she last attended a Sunday service at the Buena Park church about 18 months ago, she said, less than 30 people were there.

A current church member who volunteers to feed poor people through another agency, said, “Pastor Drake is a nice man, a good man. But he got this idea of grandeur a couple of years ago, and then he just got outrageous.”

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Several providers of services to the homeless said they tried to help Drake avoid his battle with the city but he appeared bent on confrontation.

“I just feel that the city was willing to work with him and provide what he needed to build the place, and he just didn’t want to follow any rules,” said Jim Miller, president and CEO of the Westminster-based Shelter for the Homeless.

“Even the good Lord said you had to obey civil authority, but maybe he didn’t read that part. This never had to go to trial.”

Drake brushed off the criticism by saying Palmer, the prosecutor, and other city officials lied throughout negotiations. But he later conceded the city officials told him they could be flexible on several points.

“He is a master manipulator of words and phrases,” said Palmer, who said the city went out of its way to work with Drake. “There are other ways Pastor Drake can do his ministry without violating the law. But if he helped the homeless legally, he wouldn’t have gotten the fanfare he’s gotten, so where’s the motivation?”

Jon Alexander, who represents Drake for free despite disagreeing with his anti-gay, anti-abortion positions, didn’t dispute the blustery pastor thrives on media attention.

“We’ve got people talking about an issue that has been swept under the nation’s rug. That’s a good thing. But it’s easy to see how he could be perceived as a media hound,” Alexander said. “I think in his younger days, Wiley Drake was a wild man. These days, I think he’s a good Christian, but he’s still a little wild.”

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Lee Romney and Bonnie Hayes.