Students’ Trip Grounded as Travel Agency Goes Under

Fifty-four Orange County young people, many of whom had worked at after-school jobs to save money for a monthlong European tour this summer, were left without their money or their trip this week when their travel agency filed for bankruptcy, the group’s adviser said Wednesday.

The same thing happened to 17 teachers, advisers and parents who had planned to join the June 30 tour, according to Tom Youngerman, San Clemente High School English teacher and principal organizer of the trip.

Youngerman said money paid for the trip totaled more than $200,000. The cost for the entire tour was $3,500 per person, but some participants did not plan to make the whole trip.

Doug Erdman, 16, of Capistrano Beach, who just graduated from San Clemente High School, said: “For nine months I did yard work, baby-sat, did odd jobs. I raised all but about $1,000 of the $3,500 I needed, and I got that from my family as a graduation present.

“I know four other guys who earned all their trip money, working 30 or 40 hours a week after school, nights and weekends. Disappointed? I’m mad. This is bad.”

Youngerman said their travel agency was Travel International, based in Campbell, near San Jose. A clerk in federal court in San Jose confirmed that the company had filed for bankruptcy Monday.

Ted Barnum, the father of one of the students, said a letter was received Wednesday from the company informing them of the bankruptcy proceedings.

“It said that they would notify us of a court date,” Barnum said.

Efforts to reach company spokesmen by telephone were unsuccessful Wednesday.

The tour was to have included 29 students from San Clemente High School and 25 from Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo, plus the adults, Youngerman said.

It was to have taken the group to London, Paris, Austria and the Netherlands, then 13 days on a cruise ship through the Baltic Sea with visits to Leningrad, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo.

Youngerman said a meeting will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Little Theater at San Clemente High School, when attorneys, several of whom have children involved in the matter, will discuss possible steps to be taken.

Two of the lawyers, Gerald R. Gibbs and Norm Seldman, said efforts are being made to find out if plane tickets had been purchased, in which case they might be recovered and cashed in “to get back some of the money.”

Both men said they had no information on why Travel International filed for bankruptcy and were waiting for court documents to be sent to them.

Piper Barnum, 15, who will be a junior at San Clemente High next fall, said she “started about last Christmastime asking relatives to give her money instead of gifts.”

“Then I did a lot of baby sitting, and the people I worked for gave me a $500 bonus,” she said. “But some of my friends had to earn every penny. A couple of them worked 40 hours a week on top of going to school, and that’s just too much for anybody.”

“When you cut through all the smoke and confusion right now and just take a look at the faces of these kids,” attorney Seldman said, “you get the chills.”

Times staff writer Ray Perez contributed to this story.