Hope and Reality Collide

It was a day after a graffiti-removal worker employed by Homeboy Industries was shot to death while stopped at a traffic light at a Boyle Heights intersection, and six weeks after another graffiti worker was slain by suspected gang members.

But at the 1st Street headquarters of the organization that provides jobs to gang members trying to turn their lives around, there was little sign of mourning Wednesday. A crowd of mostly Latino men and teenagers with shaved heads, several with gang tattoos, went about their work, their efforts punctuated by jokes and laughter.

The workers say that violent death is something they are accustomed to from their years in the gang life and that it could have easily been them shot.

“It is something we deal with every day, even before we came to Homeboy, with our own families, our friends, people we worked with and played ball with,” said Richard Moya, 30, a heavily tattooed employee who spent 10 years in prison for crimes he committed while in a Boyle Heights street gang.

For many people, Homeboy Industries, opened 12 years ago by Father Gregory Boyle in this working-class district just east of downtown, represents both a great hope and a sad glimpse into the reality of gangs in Boyle Heights.

Supporters say it marks the neighborhood’s best chance of breaking the cycle of gangs and violence.

But the shootings have brought a reappraisal from the community and Father Boyle, who announced Friday he was shutting down the organization’s graffiti-removal program because it puts his employees in too much danger.

In an area that the Los Angeles Police Department says has the highest concentration of gangs in the city -- 60 in the 16 square miles covered by the Hollenbeck division -- many believe it’s impossible for many workers at Homeboy Industries to get away from their pasts.

“What a lot of the community sees is ... employees still active in gangs,” said LAPD Senior Lead Officer John Pedroza. “A lot of them, the only reason they’re there, is for community service. But once they’re done, nothing’s changed. I know that they can change. I’ve seen it done .... Their attitude is, ‘Give me what everyone else has, and then we can talk about it.’ ”

Police at first said they believed that Miguel Gomez, 34, was killed June 24 because he was painting over the graffiti of gang members. But LAPD Det. Rick Peterson said Friday he believes Gomez was killed by people he knew in his past, perhaps from his gang days.

Detectives said Tuesday’s killing of Arturo Casas, who was driving back to a graffiti cleanup when he was shot, was connected to a gang feud in East Los Angeles.

No arrests have been made in either case.

Despite the recent violence, Boyle said he still believes Homeboy Industries is making a difference both in improving the neighborhood and changing the lives of his employees.

“People say, ‘They’re taking advantage of you,’ ” Boyle said of the gang members he employs. “I say, ‘Not once.’ I give my advantage, no one has taken it away from me. I trust my gut on these things.”

The killings, if anything, point to the urgent need to help reduce the power of gangs, he said. Casas will be the 129th gang member or former gang member Boyle will have buried.

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Boyle Heights is one of Los Angeles’ oldest neighborhoods, set amid rolling hills east of the Los Angeles River. Before World War II, it was the heart of the city’s Jewish community and also included districts populated by Italians and Japanese. Latinos came to dominate the area after the war and now make up 87% of its population.

While gang activity has long been a problem, residents and police say it tells only part of the story. Boyle Heights remains a tight-knit community, with mom-and-pop markets, bakeries, taco stands and hair salons lining the 1st Street and Cesar Chavez Avenue business districts. Tidy Craftsman bungalows lining side streets and several historic cemeteries with their aging headstones stand on the neighborhood’s east end.

“It’s a little like a Mexican Mayberry RFD,” said Pedroza, who has worked in the Hollenbeck station on 1st Street for 20 years. “The hospitality of the people when you walk into a restaurant or their home, or for the most part when you go into a neighborhood, it’s a comforting feeling.”

Despite a persistent gang problem and periods of explosive violence, many residents speak of growing up and raising their children -- and sending them to college -- in Boyle Heights without ever feeling threatened.

“There’s no place I feel safer,” Boyle said. “There’s a culture, a sense of place and pride here. It’s home.”

In 1988, Boyle founded Jobs For a Future in the parish community of Dolores Mission as a job referral service. At the time, eight enemy gangs claimed the territory in and around the Pico-Aliso projects, which have since been torn down and rebuilt as mixed-income housing.

He started Homeboy Industries four years later to find employment for gang members who would have a harder time being placed in jobs because of felony records, visible tattoos and little work experience.

The goal was for gang members to use the experience in Homeboys’ silk-screening, bakery, artisan and landscaping businesses as starting points to secure other jobs. Together, Jobs For a Future and Homeboy Industries have grown to include work training and tattoo removal.

The organization has 60 to 70 employees at any one time. Each year, the group says it places about 500 people into permanent jobs, often in the construction industry, offices and warehouses.

Boyle said that to be able to imagine one’s future, a goal of the programs, in a positive way is like having “the ability to see what God sees, something other than an early death.”

Over the years, Boyle said he’s heard complaints that some of his workers still look like they are in gangs, shaving their heads, wearing their tattoos, sometimes keeping their gang names.

“The idea of growing the hair is a legitimate thing,” Boyle said. “But these are guys taking the first step in changing their lifestyle. Nothing is overnight. People are at different stages of their recovery.”

However, gang members who walk into Homeboy Industries are trying to rehabilitate their lives, Boyle said.

“Gangs are bastions of conditional love. Homeboy Industries is a community of unconditional love,” Boyle said. “Art felt that unconditional love.”

But in the wake of the shootings, some in Boyle Heights questioned whether Homeboy Industries is accomplishing its goals and whether it makes sense to place rival gang members at the center of a busy neighborhood’s business corridor.

At a meeting Wednesday night of a group called the Boyle Heights Neighbors Organization, residents talked about the shootings and the future.

“Any way we can change the name given to Homeboy Industries?” asked one mother of six children who asked that her name not be used. “When you have a name like that, it’s like you’re proud. If you really want to get out of the life you’re living, why not change the name?”

She added that by the way they dress, the youths are “still showing that they’re gang members.”

Another resident said she didn’t think it was wise for gang members or ex-gang members to be removing gang scrawls.

Dora Garcia, an aide to Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, defended the organization’s work at the meeting.

“Instead of criticizing Homeboy Industries ... let’s go take control of how we can help them,” Garcia said. “How can we make this program better?”

Villaraigosa, in an interview Friday, said the organization still represents hope for the community.

“Father Boyle understands that many young gang members have lost hope,” he said. “Through Homeboy Industries he has sought to restore that hope and dignity through work.”

Just a few miles away on 4th Street, longtime resident Jimmy Rojas, 65, said he admires Boyle.

But he said he had doubts about how much of a transformative effect a gang prevention program could have on those who have been in the life for years.

“They don’t want to take responsibility,” said Rojas, who has cut hair in Ray’s Barber Shop since the late 1960s. “They always tell the same story about why they were let go. It’s not their fault. It’s their bosses’ fault. I don’t want to hear excuses, and neither does your boss. They just want you to show up and not to be late.”

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Even as Homeboy Industries dropped its graffiti removal activities, the office still bustles with activity. Twice a week, as many as 20 people show up to get their tattoos removed over a three-hour span: in ink, stories of rough patches, stints in prison, old gang affiliations or particularly trying experiences are etched.

“They’re looking for jobs, or they’re doing this for their family, or their children,” said Lisa Parra, 27, program coordinator for the tattoo removal program. “There’s a lot of shame.”

Despite the tough image they adopt in front of others, Boyle said some of the young men of Homeboy Industries were shaken by the shootings. Many wept in private, he said, or in his office.

According to Boyle, Moya, the tattooed employee, approached him tearfully. “I want to see my kids at the end of the day,” he said.

Boyle understood: “They can all relate to the danger.”