Fourth-Grade Hero Now Has to Watch Out for Himself

Joel Perez, a 10-year-old fourth-grader, did what was right. He saw three guys, older types of the don’t-mess-with-me variety, spray-painting graffiti on an Anaheim church. Then he went home and called the police.

This was in September. The police caught the guys in the act, right there at the church. Two are 19; the other is 20 years old. The three were convicted of misdemeanor malicious mischief, fined and put on probation.

These guys are known around here, and what is known isn’t really too good.

The city of Anaheim just gave Joel a $500 reward for what he did. He is the first kid to be so honored under the city’s graffiti-removal program, which is 2 years old.

Joel’s mother, Margarita Perez, is very proud of her son. That’s how she’s raised him, she says, to respect the law, to be a good kid. When she tells me this, tears mist her eyes. She looks toward her son and she smiles.

Still, Margarita, a single mother of three, is a little nervous right now. Yes, her son did what was right. But did he do what was smart?

She wants her children to know right from wrong. She also wants them to be safe.

“I had gone to pick up my girls from school,” Margarita says. “When I got home, Joel told me that he had called the police. My heart stopped. I was really scared. I told him, ‘Why did you do that? If they find out you told, they are going to be after you.’ I knew he had done the right thing. But he’s young. I panicked.”

Margarita Perez asks me to please not mention exactly where her family lives. At first, she says no names either. Then she supposes that would be all right. Perez is common enough.

“When I talked to the officer, I told him that I was concerned about what might happen to Joel,” Margarita says. “He told me that they would protect my son.”

Joel, however, hasn’t spread word of his good deed around. A few close friends know, he says, but they know enough to keep their mouths closed.

“They know what would happen,” Joel says.

“And what would that be?” I ask.

“I guess they would come to the house and do something,” says this little boy. His words are softly spoken. He looks down.

“They could do something bad to the house or to my family,” he says.

His mother squints a little when her son says those words.

“I also tell him, ‘If you keep quiet, they are going to take over again,’ ” Margarita says. The they here is understood.

“Over there, no one would say anything,” she goes on. “Only one or two people would ever call the police.”

“Over there” is the old neighborhood, where Margarita says her family “kind of got harassed.”

“They knew who would call the police. There was a lot of drugs, people drinking, hanging out. It was terrible. One man dented my car the last time. He told me, ‘If you call the police again, I’m going to break out all your windows.’

“Then later when I told, the officer told me not to do anything. So I got really discouraged. I thought, ‘Who’s going to help me?’ All the guys, they were just laughing and drinking.”

Margarita, a bilingual teacher’s aide studying to become a teacher, has worked hard, for her family and herself. She wanted desperately to leave the the old neighborhood and finally, she did.

It is a little better here. Joel is allowed to walk the dog to the corner by himself.

Margarita’s husband, the childrens’ father, is gone. Lost to drink and drugs, Margarita says. They have been divorced for five years. He hasn’t had any contact with her, or the children, since.

That has been very hard on her kids.

“I always tell them, ‘You don’t have to be the same,’ ” Margarita says. She is referring to a father who let his children down.

Joel says that if he ever happens again on somebody breaking the law, he won’t hesitate to do what is right, even when it makes him scared.

“I was scared this time because they didn’t see me looking,” he says. “I saw them write and then I said to myself, ‘I don’t want them to be writing no more.’ I didn’t like that. At our other house, people used to always write, on cars, doors, anything. . . . It looks ugly.”

And graffiti smeared on a church, Joel says, are especially vile.

Carolyn Griebe, coordinator of Anaheim’s anti-graffiti program, says she is delighted that Margarita and Joel talked with me the other day. She says she told them that “a lot of people are going to be in awe” of Joel for what he did.

“I go around the neighborhoods and find so many people ruled by fear,” she says. “Especially the women. They are afraid to speak out. . . . Joel is very lucky to have the mother that he does.”

Griebe says that she gets asked about retaliation “all the time.” The fear of pay-back, or even of standing out, keeps people quiet. Then the bad guys just get an easy ride.

Margarita and Joel Perez know they are walking a thin line. They’d like others to speak out too. Today it is “just” graffiti. What could happen tomorrow doesn’t take more than an educated guess.

In the meantime, Joel says he’s thinking of buying a Nintendo set with his surprise $500 prize. His mother says she was thinking more along the lines of a bicycle, except bike riding can be a little dangerous around here.

“I think for her not to be worried,” Joel says. “My teacher says the more you worry, the more you get old.”