Gang Turmoil in Long Beach : Nursery Tries to Wall Out Gangs, Bullets : Safety: Despite rash of murders and shootings, director of child-care center vows to stay where school is needed.

The executive director of the Long Beach Day Nursery pointed to a plaque with a noticeable dent in the lower right corner. “That’s my war trophy,” Mary Soth said.

The night of May 31, someone fired a bullet through a window in her office, striking the plaque on the wall. “If it had been in the daytime, that could have been my head,” she said. “This is where I stand to talk on the phone.”

The incident provides a stark reminder that the city’s oldest nursery, where the staff strives to create an atmosphere of innocence and playfulness for 80 children, is in the heart of an inner-city neighborhood racked by violence and death.

From her office on the second floor of the elegant Spanish-style building at 1548 Chestnut Ave., Soth can look out her window and see the spot where 12-year-old Anita Rochell Briones was brutally gunned down Aug. 4. There have been at least two other murders and one shooting in the neighborhood since Briones’ death.

Even before the recent shootings, workers had put up a six-foot reinforced concrete retaining wall around the nursery’s playground.

“We simply knew there have been drive-by shootings. We know where we are and we did it with safety in mind,” Soth said. Nursery employees also were “hearing undesirable language in the alley and we had the feeling that we wanted to separate our children from (such things).”

Within a month, the wall had been splattered with graffiti.

The children, who range in age from 18 months to 5 years, seem oblivious to the grim surroundings as they frolic on the playground. They ride tricycles, hang from monkey bars and reach for the sky on swings.

But when a police helicopter hovers above--a sign that police are searching for someone in the area--teachers bring the children indoors.

Soth last week appeared before the City Council with several neighborhood residents to request additional police protection and other aid. The group asked the council to consider setting up street barricades to create cul-de-sacs and to assign police foot patrols to the area.

Two days later, Mayor Ernie Kell announced that a police task force had been formed to crack down on gangs in the southwestern portion of the city, which includes the nursery’s neighborhood.

Despite growing concerns over violence in the neighborhood, Soth said she is committed to keeping the nursery at the site that it has occupied for 65 years.

“We have a good program. We offer something these families need and we’re not going to be run out of town by these desperado gang members,” Soth said.

The nursery, one of three nonprofit day care centers Soth oversees in Long Beach, caters to the children of working parents, who pay on a sliding scale determined by their income. About half of the children are from the inner city, said Judie Fouquette, the nursery’s program director.

The nursery was founded in 1912 by members of the Associated Charities of Long Beach to provide care for children of working women. The nursery was run by Florence E. Fisher, described as “a loving but strict disciplinarian.”

It was moved in 1926 to the Chestnut Avenue site--at the time, a “very classy area with lots of custom homes,” Roth said.

Through the years, the center has received strong support from various local organizations and the descendants of the families that started it. The first chairwoman of the nursery’s executive committee was Florence Bixby, wife of one of the city’s founders. Today, Bixby descendants are honorary nursery board members.

Supporters recently helped raise money to pay for the center’s first major renovation, a $400,000 effort that includes a new kitchen, a laundry room, an employee lounge--and the retaining wall around the playground.

“There is a commitment. We are in a place where we are needed,” Soth said. “We turn out happy, healthy children.”

The center’s creed, posted on a classroom door, reads in part: “I have a right to be happy and to be treated with compassion in this room. . . . I have a right to be safe in this room. This means that no one will hit me, kick me, push me, pinch me or hurt me. . . .”

Parents praise the program, the teachers and the care their young ones receive.

“I’m very happy because they take very good care of my daughter,” said Teresa Tavera. “They are very vigilant. I’m not afraid.”