A path to peace

Hector Roach was in a race with his draining cellphone battery.

“I’ve been calling everyone, but there sure is nobody here, and now I have no bars.”

He had a decision to make: cancel the night walk or go it alone.

In an attempt to quell the shootings that have plagued California’s second-most-violent city, church members in the hardest-hit neighborhoods -- operating in groups of no fewer than three -- have been going up to youths hanging out on street corners and parking lots. “Hey, how are you doing?” they ask. “Do you like the neighborhood the way it is?” “What would you like to see different?”

Now, standing outside the Greater White Rose Church of God in Christ, under a white magnolia tree, Roach saw a woman coming down the street pushing a stroller, followed by two little girls on bicycles.

“You would have never seen that six months ago,” said Roach, a 50-year-old former gang leader. “That street corner over there was full of bangers. People on this street stayed locked up in their houses.”

But every week, Roach and his church friends had been going to that corner for a chat. “We were consistent. That’s the key,” he said.

Eventually the men left. They still gather just a few blocks away, dealing drugs, “but one street makes a difference,” Roach said.

“Let’s go.”

With that, he tossed out the training manual and set off on an evening’s journey that would wind him through many lives in South Stockton.

Three blocks down on Pilgrim Street is the tidy stucco home where 18-year-old Travae Vance lived until he was shot in the head. His was the 77th homicide investigated by Stockton police and the San Joaquin County sheriff’s office in 2012, a year that saw 88 slayings.

“He was a nice kid, friendly. He’d started coming to our church,” Roach said.

Around the corner, the parking lot of the Grand Save Market is the neighborhood hangout.

“Don’t think this is just the spot to drink and smoke and sell,” said Robert Latin, 51. “This is where people have been coming to tell stories -- mostly lies, but with lots of truth -- for 60, 70 years. Come here after church. You’ll see grandfathers in their Sunday best.”

There have been five shootings in the parking lot and immediate area in three years, according to police records. Latin said that sounded right -- if you count only the shootings where someone called the cops.

Menione Moore arrived to buy apple juice for the baby she’s trying to adopt. It’s her cousin’s daughter, and if Moore doesn’t get custody, the 7-month-old could end up in foster care.

The 21-year-old with bright eyes, hair pulled back in a ponytail, had been going to community college. But she stopped in order to look for work and take care of the baby.

“I’ve got this covered,” Moore said. “I’m going to have a different life. For me and her. I’m going to make sure she has someone.”

She greeted by name every person who passed -- including the men with gang tattoos.

“We all grew up together,” she said. “When there’s gunshots, I just try to stay out of the way. When you live here, it’s just normal. Nothing shocks. I never expected to live to 18.”

But sometimes, she said, even if it’s just the way life is, things happen that change you. She turned around and lifted the hood of her sweat shirt to show the name Travae Vance and the dates 1994-2012.

“He was my brother. We talked every day,” she said.”I have to admit, that one was a shocker.”

Roach approached everyone in the parking lot that evening, shaking hands, clasping shoulders. He asked them all -- the drunk, the sober, the furtive, the kids on bicycles -- the same questions: “Are you happy with the way things are in your community? What would you like to see different?”

Before a religious conversion at age 24, Roach ran a gang in East Stockton. He’s sold drugs, shot a man and spent time in the California Youth Authority. For his 21st birthday, his father gave him burial insurance.

Now he’s a churchgoing man with a wife of 25 years, a job, a mortgage and worries about how to pay for college for his kids.

“I praise God for my life,” he said. “Last night I took my wife to the movies for our anniversary, and I wished I could go back in time and not waste a minute on anything other than a life like this.”

Latin, also a former gang member, said that “when you hit 30, 40, it’s supposed to be over.... You’re in a lot more danger just from happening to be in the wrong spot when the young guys start shooting. That’s how I got hit.” He lifted his shirt to show a shiny scar on his side. His buddy rolled up his pants leg to show where he’d been sprayed with bullets from a drive-by shooting.

Anything could happen at any time, Latin said. Maybe that’s why he liked knowing that someone from the church would come by tonight. “They’re dependable. I always ask them to pray for me.”

Roach said he doesn’t expect people to offer community improvement suggestions the first two or three weeks he asks them.

“The idea is just to get them thinking that things could be different. But they have to know that we’re going to be back to ask them again. And we’ll write down their answers. And we’ll take them to the city.”

Already, the city has agreed to open the closed community center for basketball games once a week -- if Roach and other community members provide staffing. It was the first thing the men hanging on street corners told them to write on their lists.

In January, Stockton went a month without a homicide, the first time that had happened since April 2011. Roach thinks it isn’t a stretch to attribute that to men laying down their guns and coming to play basketball. Violent weekends in March, however, have the city’s homicide numbers climbing once again.

The night walks are part of a larger anti-crime effort approved by the City Council on Tuesday. Named the Marshall Plan after post-World War II rebuilding efforts in Europe, it includes community outreach and concentrating officers in known hot spots. But last year, Stockton became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, and funding for the plan is up in the air.

So for now, a stretched police force runs from one crime scene to another, and a scattering of churches continues to send parishioners out to walk and chat.

By 8 o’clock on this evening, the Grand Save Market parking lot had emptied.

“Nobody wants to be on the street now, except the ones who own them,” Roach said, heading back.

At the church, a prayer meeting was about to start. Half a dozen men helped their wives set up tables for the potluck to follow.

Many of these middle-aged church deacons were once gang members. They’re the core group for going out to talk boys off the streets.

Their reasons for not showing up this time were understandable: One man’s wife needed diabetes medication. There was a much-needed chance to work overtime.

They kidded around with Roach about playing Lone Ranger but nodded in agreement when he explained his reason for going out alone.

“One man can make a difference,” he said. “Someone has to be there every week, asking them how things could be better, until they start asking themselves what they could do to benefit their community.”

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diana.marcum@latimes.com