LULAC Honors ‘Drug-Buster,’ 4 Other Women : Community service: Latino organization praises five county residents who have made a difference in their neighborhoods or in the lives of others.

When President Bush honored her March 3 as a heroine in the war on drugs, Santa Ana housewife Rosa Perez said she didn’t sleep that night. Although she called it the “best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she also said she feared that her new-found fame would anger drug pushers in the neighborhood she has worked to clean up.

“I was afraid someone would shoot at me through my windows,” she said.

It did not happen. And so she has continued fighting in the trenches of the drug war: On Tuesday, she called police again to report that two suspected drug dealers were loitering in her yard. The men did not leave until they saw her calling police.

Perez, along with four other women, were honored Wednesday as Hispanic Women of the Year by the Orange County chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

“These ladies have been working in their own communities and meeting their goals,” said Zeke Hernandez, president of the local LULAC, the first California chapter of the oldest Latino organization in the country.

Perez, a native of Michoacan, Mexico, who came here in 1978, lives on Baker Street in Santa Ana. She is the mother of three children.

“They bring out my courage to fight,” she said. “They are why I have done what I have done. At first I was afraid. Now I am not afraid.”

She said she called police on Tuesday because she is tired of young men going into neighbors’ yards to hide their drugs, to duck cruising police cars or to use water from neighbor’s taps when they intend to inject themselves with drugs.

“We call her the drug-buster,” said Carole Vargas, a LULAC spokeswoman. “She runs out there with her broom to chase away the drug dealers . . . she is fearless of these people.”

Four others who were honored include:

Jennie Castillon of Garden Grove, founder of Corazones, which means hearts, an organization of volunteers who regularly make trips to the barrios of Tijuana and other border cities with donations of food and other assistance. The group is now providing food and spiritual counseling for residents of the low-income Buena Clinton Apartments in Garden Grove. For her work, Castillon was invited to a breakfast at the White House a few years ago and has had an audience with the Pope and visited with Mother Teresa.

“I have really had a good life, and I think it’s because of giving to others,” Castillon said.

Helena Maria Viramontes of Irvine, a writer who concentrates on Chicano literature. Co-founder of the Los Angeles Latino Writers Assn., Viramontes said she is interested in exploring the role of women in society. She was the recipient of a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship last year and is now working on a screenplay about Modesta Avila, the first convicted felon of Orange County. In 1889, Avila was sent to San Quentin for three years but died before completing her prison sentence. Records show that she obstructed a railroad track, and legend has it that Avila tried to string her laundry across the tracks to protest the train’s crossing her San Juan Capistrano property.

Viramontes said of her recognition by LULAC: “I’m just so honored to be among these mujeres who have done so much with so little and until now have received so little recognition.”

* Eloida Swenson of Brea. At age 36, and the single mother of two children, Swenson decided to enroll in college. She graduated with honors, and two years ago started her own company, American Presort Inc., which sorts mail by ZIP code for businesses.

“I risked everything, all the equity I had in my home, and everything I have has been invested in this business,” she said. Now, she tries to give back some of the encouragement she said she received from friends and family.

“I employ minority students and I encourage them to seek higher education,” she said.

* Lola Romero Seymour of Santa Ana, a ceramics sculptor and member of the board of directors of Relampago del Cielo, a Santa Ana group which works to preserve and promote Mexican culture with such activities as folkloric dance classes. As a fund-raiser for Relampago, she helps to organize Carnival, an annual Mardi Gras-style festival, and a jamaica, a fair in which young women compete for the title of jamaica queen by raising money for scholarships.

“As a feminist, I had misgivings about a beauty contest,” she said. “But we have never had a winner who was just a pretty face.”