Therapy for Grief : Gang Members Hold Carwash to Pay Boy’s Funeral Costs

The two men who organized a weekend carwash to raise money for the funeral of 9-year-old Jorge Gonzalez are gang members--just like the man who fired from a car last week in a poor Venice neighborhood, killing the boy.

“We’re all sad about it because it’s a little innocent kid who had his life ahead of him, and some punk just came and took it away,” said organizer Edgar Guerra, whose tattooed arm bears the name of his gang, Via. “It would be nice to stop all this nonsense,” he said of the city’s gang killings.

Guerra, 26, says he often visited the Gonzalez family and considered Jorge “my little friend.” He remembers Jorge as a good child who was fond of Snickers candy bars and liked to accompany his mechanic father on trips to the auto parts store.

“He was always eating candy, always had a pocketful of candy,” Guerra said, adding that Jorge was always willing to share.

Police believe that the killer who shot Jorge near his family’s house on West Indiana Avenue last Monday evening was firing at rival gang members standing nearby. No arrests have been made.

Reluctant to Talk

Although Guerra said that about five gangs operate in Venice, he shied away from talking about the gang clashes or possible motives for last week’s drive-by shooting.

“That’s one thing I don’t want to get into,” said Guerra, who continues to hang out with his Via friends in his old neighborhood, even though he now lives in another part of Los Angeles.

More than 20 young people, many of them Via members, helped wash cars Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the Venice parking lot of St. Clement Catholic Church, the Gonzalez family’s parish church. They charged $4 a wash, but accepted more. And on Saturday, they let beach-goers park their cars in the lot for $3.

By Sunday afternoon, Guerra estimated, they had raised about $900.

Among those who carefully soaped down fenders and windshields was Rosa Gonzalez, Jorge’s 15-year-old sister and one of six remaining children in the family. She had hosed the dirt off about 70 cars over the weekend and felt better for it.

“It’s been helping,” said Rosa, adding that Guerra and another Via gang member, Felipe Becerra, had organized the carwash as a “remembrance” of her brother.

The Jorge Gonzalez Fund has also been established by St. Joseph’s Center, a nonprofit social service agency in Venice. The carwash money and any contributions to the fund will be used to help pay funeral expenses and to aid the family’s “recovery,” Sylvia Morales, a center advocate, said.

Although the family is expected to receive $2,800 for burial costs from a state crime victims’ fund, Morales said funeral costs will probably amount to nearly twice that figure.

“It’s going to be difficult. They’re a very poor family,” she commented.

Jorge’s father, Pedro Gonzalez, is a self-employed auto mechanic and his mother, Maria, works at an electronics company, Rosa said.

Cars trickled in to the church parking lot Sunday afternoon, guided by hand-lettered signs pointing the way to the “car wash for funeral expenses.”

Santa Monica Patron

Cheryl Gundred of Santa Monica patronized the carwash after seeing a sign at a local restaurant where she ate breakfast Sunday morning. She gets her car washed a lot, she said, and preferred to give her money to this cause than to a commercial carwash.

Jerry Kaiser of Santa Monica had his black pickup truck washed Friday, but was back two days later, this time with a bunch of cold sodas that he donated to the wash crew.

“They can only wash my truck so many times,” Kaiser said, adding that he admired their efforts. “They’re working hard and they’re trying.”