New Episode of Tragedy Strikes a Mother’s Crusade : Crime: After a son was slain, woman began a cable TV show about drive-bys. Now another son is dead.

Three years ago, after gang members killed her elder son, Lorna Hawkins channeled her grief by creating a public-access TV program called “Drive-by Agony.”

Each month, she invites other parents of slain children to mourn their loss before the cameras, demanding that viewers confront the grim toll exacted by drive-bys--a term now so ingrained in Los Angeles’ lexicon that the show’s title needs no explanation.

This week, Hawkins’ mission took on even greater urgency. A second son was shot to death by gang gunfire.

“I thought, ‘God, is there something else I’m supposed to be doing? Am I supposed to be a martyr?’ ” the 40-year-old Lynwood woman said.

On the night her younger son was killed, Hawkins’ prerecorded show was broadcast to the 45,000 subscribers of Continental Cablevision in southeast Los Angeles County. She delivered her usual mix of pain, outrage, comfort and protest.

During the half-hour program--repeated twice weekly in nine cities from Bell Gardens to South El Monte--Hawkins interviewed a mother whose 19-year-old son was gunned down last year in Hawaiian Gardens. She also showed viewers a picture of a young woman mourning the death of her boyfriend, who was killed by gang bullets.

“I know how she feels,” said Hawkins, an intense woman with fiery eyes who was wearing a traditional African dress and long braids. “I was in that position.”

Yet as those words of empathy were being aired Monday, Hawkins was at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, grappling with a new tragedy she could not have fathomed when she taped the show a week earlier.

Her 20-year-old son, Gerald Roberts, who she said was studying to be a probation officer, was shot four times in the back with a small-caliber pistol as he fled suspected gang members on 111th Street in Willowbrook. By the time she and her husband, Frank, were allowed to enter the hospital room, he was dead.

“It’s like the devil saw me and said, ‘You think you’re smart? You think you’re accomplishing something? Here, I’ll give you something else to think about,’ ” said Hawkins, who is left with two daughters, ages 19 and 24. “I can’t stop now. I’ll never give the devil that satisfaction.”

Sheriff’s investigators, who have made no arrests, believe Gerald knew at least one of his assailants. They also said he once had some marginal gang affiliations, but had not participated since his brother, Joe Hawkins, a 21-year-old auto body repairer, was killed in a drive-by in 1988.

Their mother said neither son had been active in a gang, but had been forced to deal with gang members as part of life in their working-class Lynwood neighborhood.

“They grew up here,” she said. “How could they not be aware of the streets?”

Like the first killing, the death of Hawkins’ second son has been devastating, tempting her to withdraw into a private world of grief. But for Hawkins, hurt translates into action. Now, she says, she is even more determined to spread the word, to warn other parents of the dangers their children face and to insist that elected officials throw down the gauntlet to violent crime.

Her crusading spirit is partly a function of the agonizing silence that followed her first son’s death.

A friend of Joe’s witnessed the attack, which occurred about a block from the house where the family has lived since 1977. But, Hawkins’ mother said, he has been too fearful to testify against the four gang members who are suspected. No charges have ever been filed.

“He chickened out,” Hawkins said. “Needless to say, I don’t speak to him anymore.”

The lack of media interest reinforced her fear that Joe’s death was falling through the cracks. Like most gang-related killings, which now occur at a rate of more than two a day in the county, the shooting generated no TV coverage and no article in The Times, just a brief mention in a Long Beach newspaper.

“It was like just another killing in South-Central L.A.,” Hawkins said. “Like it didn’t happen.”

Before long, even friends and relatives were reluctant to listen to her anguish. Every time she tried to talk about Joe’s death, she said, they tried to shut her up. Forget about it, they would say, go shopping, anything to take your mind off the problem.

“I wanted to hire a skywriter to go up in an airplane and write: ‘MY SON IS DEAD, BUT WHO GIVES A DAMN?’ ” said Hawkins, who works part-time selling computer equipment by phone. “People weren’t listening. They didn’t understand that you can’t forget. You can’t just clean up and go on.”

The medium she chose to deliver that message was community-access cable TV--once heralded as the harbinger of a new era in mass communication, but now mostly a crazy quilt of obscure programs that any member of the public can produce for free.

Hawkins, who has done more than 40 shows since creating the program in 1989, differs from most cable hosts in that she addresses “more of a cutting-edge issue,” said John Clodfelter, director of community programming at Continental Cablevision’s studios in Downey.

“I don’t want to insult anybody, but a lot of other shows are done for vanity reasons,” Clodfelter said. “She came because her son was killed.”

The fact that a program named “Drive-by Agony” even exists underscores the bloody imprint gangs have left on Los Angeles culture. With more than 2,000 gang-related killings in the county during the past three years, Hawkins is never hard-pressed to find a guest; many call her.

In many ways, “Drive-by Agony” formalizes the grieving process, giving viewers a chance to regularly tap into the sorrow and anger without having to attend an anti-crime rally or peace march. Each program is ultimately a cathartic appeal for victims’ rights; it is church for the growing fellowship of people whose lives have been shattered by violence.

“It’s been sort of a support group and a healing group,” said Compton Councilwoman Patricia Moore, who has appeared on the show. “Lorna was able to take a tragedy and transcend it. She has come to the aid of mothers who have not been able to express their words because the pain had been too deep.”

The show opens with a montage of newspaper clippings as the heavy beat of a synthesizer surges to a jarring crescendo. “Six killed in weekend violence,” announces a headline. “Mother and unborn child gunned down,” says another. “In loving memory,” reads the top of a funeral program.

“Hi, welcome to ‘Drive-by Agony,’ ” says the host, sitting next to a black-and-white stenciled sign bearing the shows’s name. “I’m Lorna Hawkins.”

Occasionally, her guests include police officers, city officials and former gang members. But most of her programs are devoted to grieving parents like her, who sit beside her on simple black chairs on a carpeted eight-inch-high stage under the glare of 1,000-watt lights.

They bring photos of their slain children and sometimes sign a scroll in their memory. By the end, they are often in tears.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t really want to listen,” said Teresa Wheel, who talks about the death of her son, Kevin, on the current segment of the show. “But it’s like you want to tell everybody you see . . . show them the mother’s side, how heartbreaking it is, what it does to your life.”

Hawkins usually starts out as a slightly detached interviewer. But whenever her guests hesitate, she jumps right in with her own visceral tale of heartache, sometimes dominating long stretches of the program. This is her therapy, too.

During a show last fall, Hawkins’ guest--the mother of a young man shot by members of a Lakewood gang--spoke little English.

Seizing the moment, Hawkins turned to the victim’s mother and told her, “I know how you feel about it, because I’m a mother--we’re both moms--now we both have a son that’s been taken from us, somebody that we carried in our stomach for nine months and raised and loved.”

“Terrible,” the teary-eyed woman said.

“It’s a feeling that unfortunately never leaves you,” Hawkins said.

“So cruel,” her guest said. “Why did they take the life so young?”

Having devoted the last three years of her life to connecting with those emotions, Hawkins now finds herself coping with yet another devastating loss of a loved one. Still, she plans to press ahead with an April 25 anti-crime rally outside the Criminal Courts building in downtown Los Angeles that she has been organizing for months.

She had viewed it as the culmination of her grief since her first son’s death. Now, with a second son dead, it is just the beginning.

“I’ll be damned,” she vowed, “if my son’s gonna be just another body.”