The case of the missing altar

For decades, Don Farrell helped solve cases for the Los Angeles Police Department. Now, the retired officer has a new mystery on his hands.

Farrell, a Cypress resident, belongs to a grassroots group known as the Comite del Amor, which bought the historic St. Isidore Catholic church in nearby Los Alamitos last year. The group aims to restore the building to its look of more than half a century ago, when it served as a hub for the community. To achieve the full effect, Farrell and his team need to track down one piece of the puzzle.

As pieces go, it’s large and heavy. And that gives Farrell hope that it still exists.

“Originally, back in the ‘30s, there was this beautiful Belgian marble altar that was up there at the front and then the original Belgian marble communion rail,” he said on a hot morning recently, seated in the shaded courtyard outside the chapel. “But that was all taken out, and nobody knows where it is.

“So one of our big missions is we know that that altar and the communion rail still exist somewhere. So it’s almost like a mystery.”

Farrell, who first attended St. Isidore services as a teenager to brush up on high school Spanish, has allies in his quest to track down the items — although, so far, revelations have been elusive. For now, here are the facts of the case:

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The evidence

In a black and white photo posted on a bulletin board in St. Isidore’s conference room, the altar peeks out at the back of a wedding ceremony — the priest in front of it, with the bride, groom and wedding party lined up a step below him.

The grainy picture, which Farrell guesses dates to the 1940s, shows only the top part of the altar, with its central pillar pointing upward and its white gleam conspicuous amid the blacks and grays. At least two other extant photos show ceremonies in front of the altar, which is partly obscured in each one.

The images bring back memories for Rebecca Cagle, who was married at the Reagan Street church off Los Alamitos Boulevard in 1954 and watched her brother and sister, among others, married there as well.

Cagle, now a Seal Beach resident, was a parishioner at St. Isidore since childhood, and her mother brought her and her sister to clean the church’s interior every week. Among the items she dusted was the altar, which she called the most ornate of any in the area.

“It was made out of marble,” Cagle said. “It was beautiful. And it seems to me like it had some artwork on it of angels carved in there. And so did the railing. And it was also marble.”

Daniel Aguilar, another longtime parishioner at St. Isidore, believes that the altar came to the church as a gift from a churchgoer named Paulita, who ran a grocery store down the block. Paulita imported the marble piece — how, Aguilar isn’t sure — from Belgium, the country of origin for many Los Alamitos residents at the time.

“She bought the thing and had it imported, had it set up,” said Aguilar, who still lives in Los Alamitos and attended St. Isidore until it closed. “A lot of the parishioners who were handy with tools set it up. I was in Korea in ‘52, and it was before that when they put it in.”

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The clues

So where the altar and rail eventually go?

Ryan Lilyengren, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, said he had located nothing on file about where the altar and rail were sent in 1960, when St. Isidore closed.

By the time the items were removed, St. Isidore had gone through several thriving decades. The original version of the church was built in 1926 to serve the burgeoning community in Los Alamitos, and after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake damaged the property, the existing chapel replaced it in 1935.

According to the diocese, St. Isidore served as the primary Catholic church for its area until 1960, when St. Hedwig Catholic Church was built nearby. Father Bill Krekelberg, the diocese’s archivist, said any transaction involving the altar and rail probably would have been up to St. Hedwig’s pastor.

“The pastor there at the time was Monsignor [Desmond] Quinn, who has long passed away,” Krekelberg said. “He probably would have been the only one who knew what they did with that.”

Upon its closing, St. Isidore’s furnishings, which included pews and bells, were relocated. In 1972, though, the church reopened to offer services in Spanish and English. According to Maria Teresa Diaz, one of the founding members of the Comite del Amor, many Spanish-speaking residents considered it an essential part of the community. She often brought relatives there.

In 1999, with St. Isidore needing structural repairs, the diocese closed it again. Soon after, the Comite del Amor formed to preserve the property — now known as the St. Isidore Historical Plaza — and in 2007, it signed a six-year agreement with the diocese to lease the three buildings on the site. Last year, the group bought the property from the diocese and St. Hedwig, which counted St. Isidore as part of its parish.

Now, Farrell’s group raises funds constantly — to pay off the mortgage and to support planned renovations, which range from painting the exterior to installing heating and air-conditioning. St. Isidore hosted a Cinco de Mayo festival, and future offerings include a wine and art event on May 31, summer concerts and Picnic at the Plaza gatherings with live music and food trucks.

According to Farrell, the ultimate aim is not to bring St. Isidore into the 21st century, but rather to push it far back in the 20th. The only major difference is that it would no longer host Catholic services; Farrell wants to make it a nondenominational community center.

“Right now, this is what it was in the ‘70s,” he said of the chapel’s current layout. “As we continue to restore it, we want to make it like it was in the ‘30s.”

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The theories

So where is the most cherished Depression-era piece of all? Farrell has a hunch that the altar exists somewhere within the county limits.

“We’re still trying to figure out whether it went to a new church they were building or whether it was auctioned off or whether it’s sitting in a warehouse somewhere gathering dust,” he said. “That’s part of the detective work that we’re trying to do.”

Marilynn Poe, the former mayor of Los Alamitos and now treasurer and office manager for the Comite del Amor, said she had heard a rumor that the diocese kept a warehouse for items removed from churches and sent them around the world to other churches that needed them. Lilyengren said the diocese maintains no warehouse, but it does donate to churches in need of furnishings, often in Mexico.

Krekelberg, likewise, said it was conceivable that the altar was donated to a poorer church or even cut up for a different use.

Regardless, St. Isidore now sports a new altar, one that community members apparently built in the 1970s. If the church’s supporters manage to track down the old marble installation, Farrell said, his committee plans to find room for its replacement elsewhere on the premises.

As for the old furnishings, they could be anywhere — at a church in Orange County, at a church in Mexico, in a basement gathering dust, perhaps even confined to the scrap heap. With any luck, the Comite del Amor will track them down. But then, as Aguilar noted, the group may come up against another problem.

“Anyone who has it is sure not going to give it to us,” he said with a laugh. “That and the communion rail? Of course not.”

To borrow a phrase from church, that may take a miracle.