RIOT AFTERMATH: GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS : Back at Work, but It’s Not Business as Usual

As workers filed to work Monday, the first day back after the explosive events of last week, the talk ranged from relief that the worst of the violence seemed to be over to a new determination to pitch in and become active in local communities.

Ben Pesta, a defense attorney with the offices of Roger Rosen in Century City, found himself telling an out-of-town caller that conditions were “somewhat better.”

“But it’s an extraordinary definition of ‘somewhat better’ that encompasses military occupation,” Pesta mused.

Many simply expressed relief.

“It’s back to business, I’m glad it’s over,” said Wilfred Copeland, a self-employed certified public accountant. “But I’m from Belfast, and it was a lot worse there. There it was bombs, and you didn’t know when they would go off. Here it was fires.”

Others remained apprehensive, despite the presence of troops, fearful that all was not yet under control in the region.

“We’re pretty anxious still,” said Graham A. Jenner, a broker with mutual funds specialists T. Rowe Price in downtown Los Angeles. He and colleagues in his office were “glad that it’s under as much control as it is, but nobody thinks it’s over,” he said.

Hazel Walley, a realty assistant with the General Services Administration, had gone home last Thursday at the suggestion of her supervisor. But even on her first day back in her Figueroa Street offices, she and her co-workers were preoccupied with the unrest of recent days.

“Everybody was like in a daze,” Walley said. “It’s really scary.”

To others, the talk around the office was of packing up, and other business fears. In the Wilshire and Ardmore offices of Finamex Financial, workers spoke of the looters’ actions as “useless, the acts of opportunists, vandals,” said Renato Quinto, a mortgage banker. Though its office escaped damage, Finamex decided Saturday to move to West Covina, Quinto said.

“This year we had a recession, and now these riots,” said a worried Naoya Muranaka, assistant operations manager of Maxy U.S.A. Tours Inc., with offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo. “I’m in the travel business--and there are absolutely no customers. One of my tour guides told me that there were no Japanese visitors at the airport today.”

But some offices were galvanized by the events. At American Express Travel Management Services in Inglewood, sales director Signe Gallagher called a meeting of her 25-member staff.

“We feel very deeply about the whole incident,” Gallagher said. “If anything, it sort of shocked us into action.” She and her staff discussed short-term efforts, such as cleanup help and food donations, as well as the possibility of long-term projects such as adopting a local school or teaching young people the basics of personal finance.

Gallagher said that she and her colleagues came to work with “just an incredible sadness and a feeling like it’s time to do something.”