Owners’ Lifelong Dreams Were Destroyed in Minutes : Business: Many mom-and-pop shops that were the lifeblood of poor neighborhoods are gone for good.
For Rod Davis, the Firestone tire and auto repair shop on the corner of 52nd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard was the culmination of a lifelong dream--to become his own boss.
Davis got his start changing tires, worked his way up to management and bought his shop in 1983 with a loan from Firestone. His wife, Lola, and son Rod Jr. helped build the shop into a $1-million-a-year business, working 14-hour days, six days a week. Davis’ assistant manager, Steve Anderson, felt so secure about the future that he signed escrow papers last Wednesday on a new home.
But that night the dream died. Rioters torched the shop as mayhem spread across the streets of Los Angeles. Davis watched the horror unfold on a television newscast as his life’s work was reduced to a blackened heap of twisted steel and concrete.
“I’m bitter,” said Davis, 53, who doesn’t know if he’s going to rebuild his Crenshaw-area business, which is one of the few black-owned Firestone shops nationwide.
“I hear some people saying ‘it doesn’t matter, Firestone’s got insurance.’ But that’s not what this is about. We came here from Mississippi looking for opportunity. I put nine years of blood, sweat and tears to make this work. We were just getting to the point where I could, maybe, take a vacation.”
Nowhere has last week’s economic devastation been harder felt than among the legions of small-business owners like Davis, whose shops fill Los Angeles’ urban landscape and provide the lifeblood to the local economy.
Many sprang up during the heady 1980s as burgeoning real estate values enabled would-be entrepreneurs to borrow money, quit their jobs and strike out on their own. Such businesses--from manicure to machine shops--account for at least one-third of Los Angeles County’s $236-billion-a-year economy, according to Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County.
All told, there are more than 200,000 small businesses in the city of Los Angeles. Officials estimate that thousands of these enterprises may have been wiped out in last week’s rampage. Now, experts say the resilience of these mom-and-pop entrepreneurs will play a key role in determining whether city neighborhoods hit by fires and looting will ever thrive again.
Sang J. Oh, Cannaan Glass & Mirror
The promise of Los Angeles loomed large for Sang J. Oh when he sold his business in Seoul, South Korea, 12 years ago, bought plane tickets for his mother, wife, son and daughter, and headed to Southern California.
Oh, now 47, worked odd jobs and searched for a business to buy while his family set up housekeeping in a one-bedroom Los Angeles apartment. In 1984, with $120,000 in savings, he purchased Canaan Glass & Mirror on West Pico Boulevard near Koreatown.
From the start, business was tough. Facing a bewildering banking system, Oh turned for assistance to an ancient Korean business practice known as Kye-- in which shop owners pool their money to help keep each other’s enterprises afloat.
An infusion of several thousand dollars from the Kye gave Oh enough breathing room to expand his operation. Eventually, he prospered and was able to buy a four-bedroom home in Hacienda Heights. He also joined a new Kye that helped sustain other small Korean-American businesses.
But the ancient financial network that sustained Oh was helpless against Thursday night’s onslaught of street crime. Oh’s leased storefront business--part of a mini-mall that burned to the ground--was not insured. He spent the weekend at home, by the phone, desperately calling friends and relatives for help.
“I try to borrow money,” Oh said. “They say, ‘I understand your situation but I don’t have any money.’ ”
The destruction of his store, Oh said, will not only cripple his family but also the other members of the Kye who depended on his monthly contributions to sustain their businesses.
“I can’t pay the normal,” he said. “All my members worry about that. The system has broken down.”
Oh says he lost $150,000 worth of equipment and owes banks and his Kye an additional $120,000.
He said he would like to rebuild his business in the same neighborhood because that is where his customers are, but he said he faces “a big financing problem.” Oh said he needs a minimum of $50,000 to buy equipment and supplies.
Oh had looked forward to sending his 18-year-old son, Bryan, off to the University of Chicago this fall to major in business and, perhaps, one day take over the operation of selling and installing glass products.
Now those plans are in limbo. Even if Oh can scrape together money for the tuition, Bryan, after watching the destruction of thousands of businesses on television, isn’t sure he wants to take over the family business.
“My son, he sees this (destruction). . . I don’t think he go into business,” Oh said. “I’m a parent. Like everybody else I try to do my best for my family. Now I can’t do nothing.”
Myrna Rodriguez, La Costa Travel & Tours
It took Myrna Rodriguez and onetime advertising executive Paul Warren nearly two years to save enough money to open their own travel agency. It took arsonists about an hour to burn it to the ground.
The strip mall on Hoover Avenue and Adams Boulevard, which housed La Costa Travel & Tours and about seven other stores, was destroyed in the rioting that swept over Los Angeles’ streets after Wednesday’s verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating trial.
The wave of destruction took with it Warren and Rodriguez’s dreams of building their own business. The married couple worked day and night to save about $15,000 and borrowed another $10,000 to open the agency last year near the USC campus.
“And now it’s all gone, everything, absolutely everything,” Warren said as he viewed the smoldering remains Saturday. “Every penny we had is up in smoke.”
They had no insurance, a business gamble that Warren said didn’t seem so risky until last week.
“I never thought they would burn us out,” he said.
The strip mall survived an initial looting attack on Wednesday. But the cluster of shops succumbed to a second assault Thursday. “We worked so hard to bring something to this neighborhood,” Warren said. “I just can’t believe it.”
The couple mirrors the demographics of the surrounding community. She is a Latina. He is black. The two groups make up the majority of the population in South Los Angeles. The area’s racial mix is one of the reasons they chose the location for their shop.
Now, Warren said, they regret it.
“My wife always wanted to be in the travel business,” Warren said. “It was a dream. Who would have thought the community would turn and do something like this?”
The couple has discussed starting another agency, but Warren said it may take them several years to save enough money. And they question whether it would be worth it. Business had only recently started to pick up after a sluggish 1991, when the war in the Persian Gulf and the recession put a damper on travel.
“It just hurts me when I think about how much time and energy it took to put this together,” Warren said. “But you have to ask yourself, ‘What if this happens again?’ There’s no reason why it couldn’t, and what then? Do we dare risk it? I just don’t know.”
Patsy Brown, Papa’s Grocery
Patsy Brown was one of the lucky ones. Her store, Papa’s Grocery, on the corner of Van Ness Boulevard and Vernon Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles, was spared in the mayhem.
Brown said it was her frustration with shoddy service that prompted her to open her own market. And Brown believes it was her good treatment of neighborhood customers that saved the store from destruction.
But despite her good fortune, Brown still faces a daunting future. There are plenty of customers now, but they may not want to continue to brave long lines and possible shortages of merchandise. And many may be forced to leave the area because of a lack of jobs and housing.
Brown also worries that her insurer may cancel her policy and that suppliers might be reluctant to keep her shelves stocked. Since Wednesday, suppliers have suspended deliveries, forcing Brown to send her employees out for merchandise.
Brown got her start in business during the 1980s as a small-scale real estate developer in the Crenshaw area. She opened her store six years ago after paying a Boston doctor $150,000 for the property.
The original building had housed a fish market and 20 apartment units that were showing signs of deterioration. But Brown spent liberally to modernize and renovate the site and even purchased a lot across the street for parking. The result has been a success for Papa’s Grocery.
Brown has kept her store open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. amid the raging fires and looting in nearby blocks. Her clean, well-lit market has drawn blocklong lines of black, Latino and Asian customers. And despite the destruction and fear that has swept Los Angeles, she vows to continue construction on a new grocery store near another riot-torn area--Adams and Western.
“I honestly think this is a good (area) to be in,” Brown said.
Brown insists that Los Angeles neighborhoods would be better served if more entrepreneurs had a stronger commitment to their communities.
“I think that the other black stores that were hit, people just didn’t know they were black-owned,” Brown said. “But I want them to know that we appreciate their business. I train my employees to be courteous and make an extra effort.
“I’m confident I’ll never move my business,” she added. “It’s not just because I’m black and happen to understand black people. I’m in the service business, and I understand people, period.”
Wook Her, Wook Her’s Stereo and Jewelry Mart
The rioters who pillaged the warehouse containing Wook Her’s Stereo and Jewelry Mart wasted no time in cleaning out everything he had built up during the past eight years. They even carted out the safe that contained his parents’ wedding rings.
The fire took the rest.
The businessman figures he lost nearly $150,000 in jewelry, cash and merchandise in the blaze that destroyed the building at 7th and Union streets near downtown Los Angeles. His insurance will cover some of the loss, he said, but not enough to reopen the business.
“It took me 11 years to save enough money to open this, and just like that, it’s gone,” he said.
Her, who was born in Korea, worked in a variety of retail jobs and played piano in nightclubs after coming to live in Los Angeles. He used his earnings to purchase stereos and other equipment before getting about $25,000 in loans to open his own store.
“I worked day and night to save enough money; it seemed like I never stopped working,” he said. “I built it up to a point where it was making money. Why would people do this to us? We were good to the community. I wanted to make this a better place. And now I’m beginning to hate it.”
The shop owner said he employed one other person at the store, in addition to his 15-year-old son, Steve, who often helped out. Her said that he has an interest in another family-owned stereo appliance store, but that the loss may require him to take another job.
As he sifted through the rubble Saturday, Her said that he is bitter about the rioting. What happened, he said, shows that there’s no reward for those who work hard as long as people have so little regard for life or property.
Still, he is grateful to be alive. He was at the store when a mob of several hundred people stormed the warehouse, overpowering several armed security guards. Her said he wasn’t thinking about the business then, because he was sure he was going to die. He was swept aside by a wave of looters and stood by helplessly as the building was torched.
“I just thought, ‘I can’t lose my life, because then I lose everything,’ ” he said. “At least this way I have a chance. Maybe not a good one, but I can try.”
