Man, 19, Arrested in Vandalism at Trabuco Hills High : Crime: Suspect, thought to be a white supremacist, is taken in his Whittier home. Two other arrests are expected to follow.

A 19-year-old suspected white supremacist was arrested Wednesday for allegedly vandalizing Trabuco Hills High School last November, blanketing the campus with dozens of racist slogans and other graffiti.

Rene Alva was taken into custody without incident in his Whittier home by Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigators at 8 a.m. A department spokesman said two other people, a 19-year-old Whittier man and a 17-year-old Mission Viejo girl, will soon be apprehended in connection with the vandalism.

Eyewitnesses have placed the three on the campus, when graffiti such as “Skins,” and “Thank God I’m White” were spray-painted on walls throughout the school over a weekend night last December, said Sheriff’s Lt. Robert Rivas.

Alva and the other suspects will be charged with vandalism rather than a hate crime because the graffiti were not directed at any one individual, Rivas said.

Other symbols spray-painted included “Whittier Rascals,” the name of an alleged skinhead group. Although Whittier police didn’t recognize the group by name, Rivas said investigators feel that the vandals belonged to a newly formed gang.

“I believe this was a fledgling gang,” Rivas said. “I think we nipped it in the bud.”

Investigators confiscated boots with colored laces along with other clothes commonly worn by skinheads at Alva’s home, where he lives with his parents. Rivas said Alva also had a swastika tattoo on his body.

He declined to identify the other 19-year-old Whittier resident or the juvenile, but said the three are friends and know other youths in the Saddleback Valley area. Investigation into whether other people were involved in the vandalism is continuing, he added.

The graffiti shocked and infuriated black students and other racial groups on the campus.

Administrators responded by holding group meetings with black students and offering a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of the vandals.

“There’s no doubt that the graffiti rocked our campus,” said Principal William Brand. “We’re probably still in the process of healing. Our kids were not prepared for something like that.”

Brand said he doesn’t know the identity of the 17-year-old. If she is a Trabuco Hills High student and is found to have been involved in the spray-painting, “she would be expelled,” he said.

Although the incident will not be treated as a hate crime, Brand said the graffiti carried the same emotional impact.

“I’m not sophisticated in law to know the difference” between a hate crime and vandalism, Brand said. “I just know that what happened hurt this campus.

“I believe we became stronger for it,” said the principal. “But I wouldn’t recommend the experience.”