A CITY IN CRISIS: HOPE AND PRAYER AMID THE ASHES : Close-Knit Guard Unit Seeks to Be a ‘Calming Presence’ : Security: Visalia squad provides armed protection at one of few open markets. They meet some taunts, but many gestures of welcome.

On the military’s grease pencil diagrams they are part of the 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion of the 160th Infantry, California Army National Guard.

Less formally, they are a squad of grunts from Visalia who are as much family as combat team.

Staff Sgt. Jim Lysiak, 34, is the boss. He’s an engineering technician who joined the weekend military to extend 11 years spent in Germany and Korea with the active Army. Lysiak earns $3,000 a year for weekend drills and an annual encampment and it is helping pay for an engineering degree.

But Saturday was no drill.

Four days into what the guard has started to call the “Rodney Riots,” Lysiak’s squad had set a circle of armed security around a Boys market on Crenshaw at Rodeo Road.

It was one of only three grocery stores left unlooted and open within a four-mile radius. The stink of collapsed, smoldering stores was everywhere.

Lysiak stood impassively behind his riot visor and non-regulation Ray-Ban shades, checking the positions of his men and saying he frets for them all.

There have been tales of low-riding gang members yelling that their AK-47 assault rifles offer more firepower than the guard’s M-16 automatic rifles. Earlier on this day there were raised fingers, spitting and taunts aimed at the squad.

“As as a leader, you have to make sure your people aren’t affected by it and can blow it off,” he said.

Lysiak well knows the tragedy involving national guardsmen at Kent State. He does not want his own name to go down in infamy because one of his men fired reflexively out of fright.

“So if you can keep them under control, other people will see it and we become a calming presence. If we get out of control, so do they and then there’s a riot.”

The 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion of the 160th Infantry, was a microcosm of the 7,742 California guardsmen who spent the weekend on the streets or resting at a dozen assembly points from Baldwin Hills Plaza to the Sports Arena.

As workers, as noncommissioned hands, they shared the public frustration at the time it took to get the guard operational. Alpha Company, for example, was at its Visalia armory by 3 a.m. Thursday but twiddled its rifles for 18 hours before leaving for Los Angeles.

Other unit members, many of them Vietnam veterans or police officers in civilian life, griped at news stories painting them as young, inexperienced guardsmen. Some thought the arrival of federal troops would be interpreted as commentary on the inefficiency of rank-and-file guardsmen, when, in their view, the California guard’s upper echelon was to blame.

“We have been here since Friday morning but have only been sent out on one mission,” complained a noncommissioned officer who requested anonymity. “I’ve got well-trained guys here with far more experience in controlling civilian situations than the regular Army.

“But federal troops are sent out while we sit here and do nothing. I find it insulting. Even being driven around neighborhoods in trucks would add to the military presence, provide a constant deterrent and give us something worthwhile to do.”

Squad member Spec. Kirk McHolland, 29, is a builder of swimming pools and the cowboy of the group. He has a tattoo on his biceps, wears fingerless gloves and a bandanna under his helmet. After monitoring communities through a decade of guard and Army service, McHolland said he knew that Los Angeles would one day erupt again.

“Still, I never thought I’d be walking through a supermarket wearing a flak jacket and carrying an M-16,” he said.

Spec. John Tucker, 28, is a decorated ex-Navy SEAL (Sea-air-land commando) who participated in the Grenada invasion, and now drives a furniture truck in Visalia. Being ordered into battle gear has drained him emotionally. His wife, Kathy, is due to have a baby any day.

If it comes when he is on riot duty?

“I’ll be a father,” he said. “But I’m not going anywhere until this thing is over.”

Spec. Manuel Contreras, 27, builds steel doors for a living. He has spent nights catnapping alongside his buddies with a rucksack for a pillow; considers the squad his family and sees his current duty as “donating a part of myself to the people who have been affected by this.”

But he is confused by those who have taunted him.

“They don’t seem to realize that next time they go to the store, I might be the only thing between them and a looter trying to kill them,” he said.

Spec. Jerry Rodriguez, 25, a worker at a Haagen-Dazs ice cream plant in Visalia, has a wife, a 3-year-old daughter and knows he could lose it all to one sniper.

“I worry about that a little,” he explained. “Especially at night. So I just talk to my buddies about what might happen so we can be more prepared when it happens. If it happens.”

The 3rd Platoon’s seven-hour vigil at the Boys market turned out to be the infantryman’s urban equivalent of a long, hot walk in the sun.

No shots. No looters.

As calm broke out, it certainly was eased by the 3rd Platoon’s role as messengers of a new normalcy.

Lysiak remained alert to certain cars and vans cruising the area. But he found time to supervise a long line outside the store; those wanting to cash checks should remain in line, shoppers could go right in.

Tucker schmoozed in the store, flirting here, joking there, returning customers’ moods to where they had been this time last week.

A man hawked “Never, never, NEVER AGAIN” T-shirts in the parking lot. Another instant entrepreneur shot photographs of stores displaying “Black Owned” signs and said they should sell well as posters in Las Vegas.

People from the neighborhood brought pop and chocolate cake to the guardsmen. Thumbs were turned up to the soldiers. Savedra Morton lifted her nephew, 8-month-old Rasi, to shake hands with one trooper.

“I’m sorry you guys had to come down here like this,” she said. “But I’m sure glad to see you.”

The day clicked completely back to peace when Dianne Feinstein detoured her U.S. Senate campaign trail to the store.

She chatted with Boys officials and a reporter, saying all the correct things about urban scars, greater development of minority businesses and making communities work.

Then a shopper touched Feinstein’s elbow.

“Do you work here?” she asked.