Gift of Trust Brings Lethal Reward : Skid Row: Harold Veo was known as ‘The Angel of Main Street.’ His fatal beating angers friends.

His name was Harold Veo, but to many down-and-out people along Skid Row, the 76-year-old man was known as “The Angel of Main Street.”

He was the man behind the counter at a downtown Los Angeles employment agency, finding jobs for the jobless and trusting everyone who sought a break, even the man who later slipped into the agency’s office and savagely beat him.

Veo, who matched unemployed people with odd jobs through King Labor Services, died Friday at a hospital from injuries suffered in the Dec. 2 attack. A man who had been arrested as a suspect was released because of insufficient evidence.

Although employees at King Labor Services refused to comment, the death is brewing anger among Veo’s friends and acquaintances. Many of them, mostly blue-collar people who pass the time at bars near the agency’s office on East 5th Street, are marking the suspect as a wanted man.

“There’s a lot of guys that are out to get him right now,” said G.C. Allensworth, 67, a long-time friend and drinking partner of Veo. “The guys know him. They’ve seen him. He was some guy who beat up an old man, and there’s no excuse for that.”

According to the victim’s friends, the attack occurred about 9 a.m. as Veo wrestled with paper work in the agency’s office. The assailant surprised Veo, ripping a nearby telephone from a wall socket and hitting the victim with it several times.

The assailant had been placed in a job through Veo, but lost it after about a month, either because he stopped showing up regularly or was smoking marijuana on the job, Veo’s friends said. Police were unavailable for comment Saturday, but the victim’s friends said the assailant probably attacked because he thought Veo was to blame for losing his job.

A passer-by who went to the office looking for work stumbled upon the fracas and went to get help. When people from the King Edward Saloon next door arrived, the assailant was gone and Veo lay on the floor.

The bar manager, Nick Gasso, said when he asked Veo who had beat him up, his friend of 20 years mumbled a name.

“When I heard Harold say the guy’s name, I remembered it was the guy who was walking up and down the street 45 minutes earlier looking like he was looking for something,” Gasso said. “I can’t remember his name, but if I heard the name or saw the guy I would remember.”

Veo had worked at the Skid Row agency for more than 12 years, assigning job-seekers to simple office work or temporary labor with companies such as May Co., Broadway department stores, and Jarvis Electric Supply Co.

Veo would get up from his room at the nearby Hotel Rosslyn, cross Main Street and walk less than a block to the tiny office, where he would start each day early to accommodate a typical morning rush of people from “the bottom of the barrel of life,” said Allensworth.

“The guys who sought work were guys who lived at missions and cheap hotels if they didn’t live on the street,” Allensworth said. “Everyone trusted the man, and he returned that trust.”

“He was like an angel, that’s why people called him the Angel of Main Street,” Gasso said. “He helped people when they needed money, and people appreciated that. But he did it because it was the only thing he had in life besides himself. They were his family.”