Crusader for Justice : Daughter’s Death Led Vicky Chavez to Help Latino Crime Victims

For days now, Vicky Chavez--known to barrio residents as La Comadre , an affectionate term for godmother--has phoned, hunted and hounded countless people in Los Angeles for $800.

The money is not for herself.

It’s for a Mexican family whose child was murdered in a drive-by shooting last month. The parents spent what little money they had on funeral costs. Since then, they and their surviving children have been without electricity, water, food, rent money--and hope.

“Everyone,” says Chavez, “is turning their backs on them.”

Everyone except Vicky Chavez, a determined, fearless 56-year-old grandmother who fights for the rights of Spanish-speaking victims of violent crime. She understands their ordeal because she, too, has been touched by violence. Her 21-year-old daughter, Elaine, was murdered in 1981.

Three years ago, Chavez launched a one-woman crusade to help Los Angeles County crime victims who recently came from Central and Latin America. Whether they live in gang territory or on Skid Row, Chavez says, they are people whose American dreams have turned into nightmares.

“They are already victims of their own homelands,” Chavez says of the undocumented workers from El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua who have fled their war-torn and economically depressed countries for haven in the City of Angels.

But once they get to Los Angeles, Chavez says, many of them become victims once more.

“They become the innocent prey of muggers, robbers, rapists and killers who threaten to report them to immigration officials if they don’t surrender their cash or belongings,” she says. “Those who resist risk their lives.”

Until Chavez was named director of Proyecto Latino, a model program started by the nonprofit Crime Victim Center, Spanish-speaking crime victims had virtually no place to go for help.

Language and culture--but mostly the fear of deportation--continue to keep undocumented workers from reporting crimes to police, receiving medical attention at hospitals and seeking psychological and grief counseling at centers. They are entitled to these public human services despite their lack of money and their immigration status, Chavez says.

“Instead, they are made to feel like dogs who go off into a corner and heal their own wounds, and that’s not right,” she says. “These are people who deserve better. These are people who live in constant fear, in constant frustration because they can’t maneuver the system here. They think the police, lawyers and doctors work for the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) because, as victims, that’s what they hear.

“They don’t realize that they have a right to have a lawyer stand up for them in court, that they have a right to report a crime and that they have a right to medical care after they have been assaulted,” Chavez says.

It is her role as the voice for scared, helpless families that Chavez clearly values most. Through her Spanish radio and television public-service spots, as many as 2,000 Latino families have spoken to or been visited by the woman they respectfully call “Miss Vicky.”

She returns the respect. It’s evident as she counsels Maria Hernandez, whose 39-year-old husband, Salvador, and 6-year-old daughter, Irma, were slain last year in a drive-by shooting.

The Hernandezes were watching TV when bullets from an Uzi machine gun flew through a living room window at their Compton home and struck Hernandez, her husband and one of their six children. Maria Hernandez, a native of Michoacan, Mexico, was shot in the back and spent one month in intensive care at Harbor General Hospital and several more months recuperating at home.

Chavez, Hernandez says, helped pull her through: “She hunted me down in the hospital. I didn’t know who she was, but she heard about me. If it wasn’t for Miss Vicky, I don’t know how my family would have survived through our tragedy.”

Because of Chavez’s efforts, almost $10,000 in donations poured in from the community to help the family with burial costs, legal fees, rent and utility bills. With the money, Hernandez was able to move her family to Lynwood. Suspects have been arrested in the Hernandez case, and Chavez has escorted Hernandez to court to explain how the criminal justice system works.

“The Spanish-speaking people I work with are in need of not only emotional support, but also advocacy with the courts, district attorneys, detectives, the police department, hospitals and sometimes even with landlords because people get robbed and don’t have money for rent,” Chavez says.

Still, the biggest help she can offer, she says, is simply a friendly ear, someone who understands Spanish and will listen to crime victims discuss their fears and problems.

“I’ve been there. I know what it’s like,” she says, referring to the 1981 death of her only daughter, Elaine, who had three months earlier witnessed the murder of a grocery store box boy.

After Elaine testified at a preliminary hearing, the Chavez family received hang-up calls at their Hacienda Heights home at all hours of the night. But an unidentified caller’s demand that Elaine change her testimony at an upcoming trial finally made the Mt. San Antonio College student realize that her life was in danger.

“I remember Elaine saying, ‘Mom, they’re going to kill me for testifying!’ ” Chavez recalls, dabbing at tears. She pauses to regain her composure. “Elaine asked me, ‘Mom, what should I do?’

“I said to her, ‘Well, what have we taught you to do?’ and she answered, ‘To tell the truth.’ ”

Chavez suggested that her daughter go into hiding before and during the trial, but Elaine insisted on staying at home.

Despite bouts of depression and worry, Elaine made the most of the situation, though she rarely left the house. Then, one day, she decided to visit some childhood friends to lift her spirits.

She washed her car, took a shower, put her hair in rollers and slipped into jeans and a T-shirt.

“She looked happy,” Chavez says. She remembers seeing her daughter flying out the door, saying, “I’ll see you later, Mom.”

At 3 a.m. the next day, Elaine’s body was found face down on a remote road near an Irwindale rock quarry. She had been stabbed six times in the neck. Her car was found miles away in East Los Angeles. Police theorize that Elaine, concerned for her parents’ safety, had naively returned to the neighborhood grocery store where she had witnessed the box boy’s murder, “hoping to find someone to talk to to make things right,” Chavez says.

It was then that Elaine was picked up by someone and killed, police say. No one has been arrested in the case. But according to police, Elaine’s murder has been linked to the testimony she provided, which eventually resulted in a conviction in the box boy’s killing.

When she learned that her daughter had been killed, Chavez says, “I remember screaming and screaming and screaming. I couldn’t believe it.” She glances at a high school graduation photo of her daughter she keeps in her office. “Sometimes I still can’t.”

For the last nine years, Chavez and her husband, Manuel, who now live in Upland, and their two married sons, Paul and Richard, have kept Elaine’s memory alive.

“Elaine is with me every day,” Chavez says. “Sometimes I’ll hear a song on the radio and say, ‘Elaine would like that song,’ and my granddaughter will say, ‘Grandma, Elaine is dead.’ And I’ll say, ‘But Elaine’s alive right here--in my heart.’

“You should never forget a loved one,” she says. It’s the advice she passes on to the many Latino widows and families who come to her not only for financial or legal support but also for consolation.

“After Elaine’s death, people kept telling me to stay busy, don’t think about her, don’t talk about it. But weeks after Elaine died, I got a phone call from somebody who said, ‘Your daughter wants to place a person-to-person phone call to you, will you accept the charges?’ It was a morbid joke that angered me to no end,” she says.

For the next several years, Chavez didn’t know how to deal with her pent-up feelings over Elaine’s death. Having earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at age 40, she took a job at a counseling center.

“Something was building up inside of me,” she remembers. “I needed to specialize in a certain area. I thought I would work with drug addicts.” So she counseled young women at an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program.

“But nothing made me happy,” she says. “I still felt a void in my life.”

Her search for fulfillment ended when she signed on with Proyecto Latino, the brainchild of Crime Victim Center founder Nancy Kless, who saw a need to reach out to Los Angeles’ Spanish-speaking community.

Proyecto Latino is the only program of its kind in the state and possibly the nation, Kless says.

But come March 1, the Crime Victim Center, which provides space and in-kind services to Proyecto Latino, will close. Though Chavez’s program is federally funded through June 30, it will have no place to call home unless another agency comes to its rescue. The program receives $35,000 a year from the Office of Criminal Justice Planning.

“I’m upset about the whole agency closing,” Kless says. “But I would be thrilled if at least Proyecto Latino could survive.”

So would others who know the importance of Chavez’s work.

Alex Vargas, project director with the city attorney’s Victim Assistance Program, says it would be tragic if Proyecto Latino cannot be relocated at least until its current grant expires in June. He often turns to Chavez when his agency cannot help a Latino client.

“Whenever there is a severe problem, Vicky is the first one we’ll call upon,” Vargas says. “She’s a magician. She does things in very, very subtle ways and is extremely effective. I hear nothing but positive things about how Vicky is able to fill gaps for our Spanish-speaking crime victims.”

Paula Ramos, manager of the Victim Assistance Program at the Hollenbeck division of the Los Angeles Police Department, says Chavez “goes out of her way to get the job done” for the city’s less fortunate.

“She even takes on the Police Department,” he says of her persistence in getting victims to file police reports and have officers explain their rights to them.

Bea Suga, a coordinator with the victim’s program at the West Los Angeles division, says: “If Proyecto Latino is gone, a lot of people are going to suffer because Vicky will be gone, too. And where are those people going to go? There is only so much that city programs can do to help. Vicky’s project makes the difference.”

Says Chavez: “Because of my intense fortitude and knowledge about how Latino people feel, I will go to any ends to get them what they need, including a new place for Proyecto Latino.”

Those familiar with Chavez believe she will not give up until she finds the program a new home. They know her spirit cannot be broken because they’ve seen her in action--interpreting and intervening on behalf of Latinos, many of whom face prejudice and discrimination on top of having been shot, stabbed or beaten.

“When it comes to Latinos,” Chavez says, “I will go to bat for them. They feed my soul. They give my spirit energy. They restore my humility. I do it for them. And I do it in memory of my daughter.”