Many firms rebuffed for post-riot aid barely hang on by fingernails.

Although 5,497 victims of the April 1992 riots received disaster loans from the Small Business Administration, many who were turned down are now struggling for survival.

"I'm sitting here right now wondering where my next dime will come from," said Clement Lumley, owner of Los Angeles-based Colony Cabinets Ltd., a cabinet manufacturer.

When the riots hit last year, four of Lumley's clients canceled their orders because they weren't sure if they were going to stay in Los Angeles, he said.

Lumley's business began to suffer and he applied for a $50,000 SBA loan. He was told to wait a couple of months while it was being processed, he said.

Six months later, the SBA told Lumley he had "recovered from the riots" and did not qualify for a loan, he said.

Lumley said he is far from recovery. "I'm about to lose my house if I can't negotiate my mortgage," he said.

He also applied for a loan from the Mayor's Office of Small Business and Economic Development but was denied that as well, he said.

By October 1992, Lumley had taken all his money out of his bank accounts and had maxed-out his credit card limits, he said. His office phone was turned off and he began missing mortgage payments.

Lumley said he has some big projects pending in about a month but currently has no operating capital. "None at all," was how he put it.

"All I want is the time to recover. It would be wonderful to find a source for operating capital," he said.

The SBA provided loans to riot victims whose businesses suffered physical damage or economic injury as a direct result of the disaster, said SBA spokeswoman Lisa Cookie.

The SBA most commonly denies applications because the applicant either does not have enough cash flow to service the debt or has a track record indicating a lack of dependability, she said.

To qualify for a loan from the Mayor's Office of Small Business and Economic Development, riot victims had to have been turned down by the SBA and must have been able to reopen their businesses, said Bettye Wilkes, a spokeswoman for the office.

Raymond Lark, owner of Koreatown-based Art of Raymond Lark, said he is fed up with the SBA: "They gave me the complete runaround. As far as I'm concerned it was nothing but a big sham.

"I never received a penny," he said, although he applied for a $30,000 loan.

Lark sells textbooks, notecards and reproductions on the subjects of art education and the historical development of African Americans to retailers. He has lost business because customers are afraid to come to his Koreatown studio, he said.

Also, many places in the L.A. area where Lark used to sell his wares were burned down in the riots, he said. Lark assessed his total loss at about $60,000.

But luckily Lark does much of his business internationally. "If I had to depend on L.A., I'd be pushing a basket," he said.

Diann Reece's hair salon at the corner of Figueroa Street and Florence Avenue was burned down in the riots.

She applied for an SBA loan to get Hair Wiz off the ground again. She gave the agency all the required paperwork, she said.

But SBA officials told her she didn't make enough money to be able to pay back a loan, she said.

She also applied for a loan at the Mayor's Office of Small Business and Economic Development, but "they gave me the runaround," Reece said.

She ended up gathering together her own savings and borrowing $6,000 from friends to open another salon. A neighbor whose hair Reece used to fix closed off half of her clothing store and allowed Reece to open up her beauty parlor there.

"It's doing okay," Reece said, adding that she had already lost her clientele and some of her employees in the interim.

Hollywood Bargain, a store on Hollywood Boulevard that sells general merchandise, was looted and burned during the riots. Jason Matian and his partner, Steve Ohabim, applied for an SBA loan to help recover their loss but received nothing, Matian said.

"They said, 'You don't qualify. You don't make enough money to be able to repay the loan,'" Matian recalled.

He and Ohabim also applied to the Mayor's Office of Small Business and Economic Development for a loan but "they didn't respond," Matian said.

Instead, Matian took out a second mortgage on his home and opened a new store down the street in February. Matian and his partner did get a $40,000 grant from the Community Redevelopment Agency to help with the new store because it was situated in a redevelopment zone, Matian noted.

But then he discovered the landlord of the original store wouldn't let him and his partner out of their lease.

The landlord rebuilt that store and now there are two Hollywood Bargain outlets and two leases to maintain, Matian said.

Maintaining those two leases is tough because "sales are worse than they could ever be," he said.

Serop Shugonian operated a booth in the downtown L.A. jewelry district at 7th and Hill streets. Shugonian, who is originally from war-torn Beirut, said his safe containing all his jewelry was stolen during the riots while it sat in his booth on Hill Street. "I lost everything I had," he said.

Shugonian applied for a loan from the SBA but was refused.

"I didn't understand the reason. I gave up," he said.

Now he has "started all over again," by designing jewelry in a small workshop he opened downtown. He no longer has a booth in the jewelry district, he said.