The Present Still Looks Grim for Gang-Plagued Family

For awhile, it was easy to picture a happy ending for the Ralph Rodriguez story. He’s the Santa Ana man who lives in the middle of 5th Street gang territory with his wife and four children. That was no big deal until September of 1989, when a gang-related drive-by shooting on a nearby Garden Grove street altered the course of the Rodriguez family.

Because one of the two murder victims was the 4-year-old son of Rodriguez’s cousin, Rodriguez encouraged witnesses to cooperate with police and prosecutors to help make the case against the four people accused of the shootings. Rodriguez and his son also provided some testimony, while fully realizing that residing on the same block as 5th Street gang sympathizers would likely endanger them.

Endanger them it did. Even before the trial last year, the Rodriguez family was threatened and intimidated by various incidents, chronicled both in this newspaper and in Time magazine.

At their trials, all four defendants were found guilty. It was heralded as a glowing example of citizens being willing to come forward to help dent the county’s gang problem.

That should have been where we cut to the happy ending.

Today, several months later, not only is the happy ending still on hold but the Rodriguez family nightmare continues.

Last November, three months after the verdicts came in, Rodriguez’s teen-age daughter Linda was nicked by a bullet while lying on the living room floor. A shot from a passing car had penetrated the thin walls of their home and grazed her cheek. Last week Ralph got into a scuffle with a 5th Street sympathizer on the street outside his home. While fighting with him, the man’s father stabbed Rodriguez in the side with a pocketknife. Rodriguez said a cop told him at the hospital that he was as much responsible for the violence as the other man because “you won’t move out.”

Therein lies the problem.

The Orange County district attorney’s office, grateful for Rodriguez’s involvement, wants him to move to safer ground.

However, according to senior investigator Wayne Field, Rodriguez may be the first and only potential recipient of the agency’s relocation fund who owns his home. The fund allows for reasonable relocation expenses, but not for such major outlays as buying someone’s home. The best the county can offer is possibly to extend relocation expenses for an indefinite period, instead of the normal first and last monthly rent payments and moving expenses, Field said.

Cut to Rodriguez, who says he doesn’t think he can sell his house and had been under the impression that the district attorney’s office would help him sell his current home. Because his parents’ home is collateral for his home loan, Rodriguez says, “walking away” from his current home isn’t practical.

Field, who admits to a certain amount of exasperation, says he’s concerned that the Rodriguez family will be in jeopardy as long as they remain in their neighborhood.

“I said if it comes down to your life, your wife’s life, your children’s lives, you’re far better off if you have to walk away from the house,” Field said. “He feels like he can handle it, he can somehow make it work and show them he’s tough enough to ride it out and they’ll leave him alone, I guess. He won’t say that directly, but that’s kind of the feeling I get.” Until his daughter was shot in November, Rodriguez says, he could withstand the threats. Now, he says, he’s willing to move but can’t take the chance of his house not selling. He hasn’t offered the house for sale, citing the slow market and the house’s possible undesirability.

“We have to be really sensible about this thing,” Rodriguez said. “If I walked away, it’s more than my house at stake. The loan is binding on two properties. If I walk away, I’ve not only lost my house, but I’ve destroyed my mom and dad’s life. Their property is tied up in the loan. I’m not about to put my parents out in the street because they want to relocate me.”

Rodriguez is angry because, he said, people in the district attorney’s office led him to believe even the sale of his house could be handled, if matters got that far. Field said if anyone ever said that, they were misinforming Rodriguez.

I don’t know who said what. Maybe the district attorney’s office over-promised Rodriguez to keep him happy before the trial. Maybe they were square with Rodriguez from the start, and he misunderstood what could be done for him.

The only certainty is that Rodriguez did his duty as a citizen--in fact, above the normal call of duty. Field readily acknowledges that, noting that Rodriguez was not only a good witness himself, but “he was real supportive to the other witnesses who were scared. He just did an excellent job. I take my hat off to him. If all citizens out there would do that, we could make an impact on this gang violence. Unfortunately, a lot of them are more scared than Ralph was.”

I’d like to get mad, but I can’t. It isn’t reasonable to expect the district attorney’s office to get into the house-buying or renting business as a thank-you for stellar citizen involvement. It isn’t reasonable to expect Santa Ana police to provide round-the-clock protection for Rodriguez’s family.

But neither should Rodriguez be the big loser in all of this.

He was the one who jeopardized everything to help the justice system work. He’s the one, along with his family, who has lived under a veil of fear.

“Every night, every night, it’s still the routine in the house,” Rodriguez says. “Nobody sits by the door (for fear of being shot), nobody is allowed to stay up late, nobody walks to the store. We’re still trying to be as cautious as we can.”

The next time you cluck your tongue because someone “didn’t want to get involved” and help fight crime, call me.

I’ll give you Ralph Rodriguez’s phone number. He’ll tell you quite a story.