A Father’s Urgent Plea : Thousand Oaks: Chuck Jordan has become a vocal critic of gang violence in the wake of his daughter’s death.

The night before Chuck Jordan buried his 20-year-old daughter, Jennifer, he stood alone behind a lectern to address a packed room at Thousand Oaks City Hall.

A silent audience listened as he graphically described his daughter’s slaying. He called the gang members suspected in Jennifer’s May 31 death “scumbags,” “garbage” and “terrorists.”

In the 30 days since Jennifer’s death, Jordan has become one of the city’s most vocal critics of gang violence. He has urged civic leaders inside and outside the council chambers to support efforts to crack down on gang members.

But Jordan’s contempt for street gangs has been tempered by his willingness to help teen-agers at risk of becoming gang members.

Using community meetings in Thousand Oaks and Moorpark as his soapbox, he has amassed a dozen volunteers willing to work with him in his fledgling organization, which he calls Youth Family Program. The group aims to help youths through job opportunities as well as teen-age parents through child-rearing classes.

Jordan, who has addressed several neighborhood watch groups, is working to get service organizations to distribute videotapes of his impassioned speeches to groups outside Ventura County.

“My daughter was just killed three and a half weeks ago,” he said. “In Jennifer’s memory, I am trying to stop senseless killing.”

Jordan, 55, is not a newcomer to gang problems. He grew up in a gang-infested neighborhood of Watts and said he fled the area to avoid becoming the victim of violence.

Jordan is neither willing to name the gang responsible for his daughter’s death nor discuss the continuing child-custody battle with Greg Figueroa, his daughter’s boyfriend and the father of 18-month-old Allison.

Jordan’s granddaughter was only a few feet away when Jennifer--then living with Figueroa--was shot to death from a passing car.

Cmdr. William Wade of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said Jordan has asked authorities for insight into how gang members operate.

“He’s not approaching it from being vengeful. He’s coming at it from a positive approach,” Wade said.

But Jordan is still clearly shaken by his daughter’s death.

At his home, Jordan has placed photographs of his daughter in a prominent spot in his living room. Alongside them are flowers and photos of Allison. He said he usually got along with his daughter but they sometimes fought about how she was raising Allison.

“Neither of us were perfect human beings, but we loved each other,” he said.

Jordan said he wants to keep the spotlight on his daughter’s death in an effort to do something about the gang problem.

“You’ve got to strike while the iron is hot,” Jordan said. “The spotlight is a temporary thing.”

Jordan said he has gone a step further than making speeches by meeting with gang members, including members of the Small Town Hoods, the group accused of killing his daughter, to urge them to give up their activities.

He said he was moved to do so after a 15-year-old gang member contacted him through the Sheriff’s Department.

“He had heard me say we’ve got to get young people work,” Jordan said. “I met him at a fast-food place and told him, if I help you get a job, then you’ve got to get out of the gang.”

He said the incident moved him to ask the Conejo Youth Employment Service to try to find more teen-agers jobs to keep them off the streets.

During his childhood in Watts, Jordan said his best friend was in a gang.

“In those days gangs wore brass knuckles,” he said.

He left the neighborhood before finishing high school to join the Navy. He never returned to high school but subsequently earned enough engineering credits at a junior college to work in the aerospace industry. Six years ago, he moved to Thousand Oaks to work at Northrop Corp., where he is a quality-assurance specialist.

Jamie Gregor, 26, Jordan’s surviving daughter, said she has not been surprised by her father’s unusual reaction to her sister’s death.

“He’s the type of person that when something needs to be done, he jumps in and does it,” Gregor said in a telephone interview from her Bakersfield home.

Her mother, who lives in Lancaster, and her two brothers have been more private about their grief, she said, but they support Jordan in his efforts. Her mother and Jordan are divorced.

“My sister was an innocent victim in a horrible situation, and he just wants the killing to stop,” she said.