Faithful Flock to See Wilmington’s ‘Miracle’ House

First there were the crosses that appeared on the frosted bathroom window--two of them, or three, if the light was just right.

The woman who saw them nearly two weeks ago, as she was tidying up, thought they were smudges on the glass, and tried to wipe them off, a neighbor said. They wouldn’t wipe, and the word spread: It was a miracle, right there in the little yellow house in Wilmington.

And then, just this weekend, two blocks away, on a living room window in another little house in Wilmington, witnesses said another larger cross appeared.

And since then, the crowds have not stopped; on Saturday night, they cruised reverentially past the yellow house, where an old man lies dying of cancer--or not dying, but perhaps saved by a sign of divine grace.

There are two ways of thinking of it:

There is Emma Montiel; she lives across the way from the “miracle” house of three crosses, where her longtime neighbor, Romualdo Aluizo, 70, lies bedridden, and she said: “They’re so beautiful. It makes you feel so close to God.”

And there is Joe Chavez. He has seen both images, and he said: “I’m starting not to believe any more. They’re popping up all over the place.”

As the churches warn, the path to righteousness is not an easy one.

Since the word has spread about the crosses that seem to hover on the Aluizos’ bathroom window, more than 1,000 people have come for a look, from as early as 6 a.m. until well past midnight. To the tinkle of bells from the pushcarts of the paleta (ice cream) vendors on the sidewalk, they wait in line for a glimpse of the side window, of “the miracle on Robidoux Street.”

If it is a blessing, it is a mixed one: “This is something religious, not something silly,” Montiel said, but there is “a lot of very awful traffic.” Like Chavez and other neighbors, Montiel is seeing her lawn chewed up by the faithful. “They’re messing up my yard, sitting on my cars, I can’t get out of my driveway.” Catholic Church officials, including a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Los Angeles, were reluctant to label the image a religious phenomenon, saying such images are often disproved by scientific investigation.

Until late Friday, the Aluizos’ door was open to anyone. But by Saturday, Montiel said, a large “no admittance” sign went up, and at the front door, a young volunteer from the local church stood watch in a security guard jacket.

The crosses, like faith, are in the eye of the believer: “It’s just a reflection from a street light,” Los Angeles Police Officer Robert Aldrete said Saturday. And another Robidoux Street resident, who asked not to be identified, said that a neighbor in Carson has had exactly the same cruciform image on her frosted-glass window for eight years, and has thought nothing of it. “I think it’s a reflection of light hitting the window,” said the resident. “I tried to tell one of the (Aluizo) girls and she didn’t want to listen to me. I just let it go.”

But along the street, and especially inside the little frame house where the Aluizo family--father and son carpenters--live, the crosses are no trick of optics; they are a miracle of hope come to a house where the news has been so bad of late.

According to Montiel, who said she has known the family for years, the old man was a “hard-living” fellow, head of a family of 13, who last month was given only weeks to live.

“Now you’d be surprised, his ways have changed.” He told her that if he lived, he would go to his birthplace, San Luis Potosi in Mexico, to thank a saint for his crosses. Why there would be another miracle on a picture window only two streets away, on Mauretania, no one can say. But, said Montiel hopefully, “Maybe there’s a blessing going around.”