LONG BEACH NOTEBOOK : Feisty Merchants Chased Off Looters

Ava Tengco and her husband were at home late Wednesday night when they heard that their new 99-Cent Store on Pacific Avenue was being looted. The couple ran down the street to find about half a dozen looters rifling the shelves. Without thinking, the pair grabbed a couple of boards lying outside their shop and rushed into the store with a shout.

The surprised looters dropped the stolen merchandise and ran through the aisles, the Tengcos right behind them. “We hit them with wood. We hit them with everything we could get,” Ava Tengco said. “We weren’t going to let them get away with it.”

At the Lucky store on Pacific Avenue, weary store employees on Thursday swept up the damaged food cartons and flour bags that had been scattered through several store aisles by looters.

Behind the store, several families, aided by store employees, tilted over the huge garbage bins and quickly jumped aside as a river of flour, cake mixes, and food cartons tumbled out onto the asphalt. Like children on a treasure hunt, the families quickly pawed through the mountain of flour, pulling out a wrinkled carton of cookies here, a box of crackers there. “The food is good and we need it,” a young boy explained.

Before the boy could say any more, his father beckoned with a quick gesture. The young man clambered over a pile of wooden slats and plunged his arms into the flour.

The mood at Long Beach Toyota on the Traffic Circle was somber. Workers talked about Matthew Haines, the mechanic who was brutally slain Thursday night in what became the city’s first riot-related fatality.

Haines’ friends remembered the 32-year-old Long Beach resident as someone who was always willing to help others, even strangers. He loved rock ‘n’ roll--especially the Beatles. He was “a talker.” And he was an avid Star Trek fan who often slipped “Trekker” terminology into everyday conversations. “I wish I could hear his voice right now, yakking away about Star Trek,” mechanic Doug Griffin, a longtime friend, said to co-worker Troy Sheesley.

Knowing a business opportunity when they see one, Temecula residents Richard Wright and his brother Vic, who run a glass and mirror company, loaded their yellow truck with plywood Wednesday night and headed to the Los Angeles area. On Thursday, they were busy cruising Long Beach, offering to board windows for worried merchants. Their prices: $40 to $60 depending on the size and the location of the store. But the price jumps to $100 if the neighborhood seems dangerous, said camouflage-clad Richard Wright.

“I hate to see this happen, but it’s like any natural disaster, and this is our business,” he added.

Deborah Fay faced a dilemma as Long Beach became more violent. She wanted to spend Thursday night at home in the Wrigley neighborhood, but she was worried about her flower and card shop near Redondo Avenue and 7th Street.

“I couldn’t be in both places. I wanted to be home,” Fay said. So, early Thursday, one day before most other business owners boarded up their shops, Fay covered the windows and door of her store with plywood. Her business, All Occasions, survived the night without a scratch, while an athletic shoe shop a few feet away was trashed.

In the Wrigley neighborhood, a commercial strip near her home became one of the night’s worst victims. “There were people walking up and down my alley with TV sets,” Fay said. “It was incredible. Just the feel of it.”

Early on, before the fires spread through the city, the corner of 52nd Street and Atlantic Avenue was a hot spot. Angry youths gathered there continuously, taunting passersby, glaring at police. At least half of the stores near the corner, which borders the Carmelitos Housing Project, were vandalized.

Mohamed Hassan was one of the looters’ targets. His $1 Warehouse was vandalized and he was shot at--while chatting with police officers about the vandalism. “Bullets were going over my head. (An officer) said, ‘Stay down,’ ” Hassan said. “We were behind the trunk of a police car. I stayed there for half an hour.”

Long Beach Unified closed schools Friday for practical reasons. Two private bus companies that serve the 74,000-student school system were caught in the Los Angeles curfew. The companies informed the district that their buses would be at least an hour late picking up students Friday--if the buses arrived at all.

“It does not make sense to have thousands of our students standing at bus stops waiting for buses that never show up,” Deputy Supt. Charles Carpenter said. “Our district only has 25 buses of its own.”

Watching the Kentucky Derby at the Legends bar on 2nd Street last Saturday, Matt Lothian explained that he had two reasons for leaving Long Beach on Friday during the riots. One of them was staring at him between bites of chicken fingers--2-year-old son MacKenzie. The second reason was a 10-month-old baby at home.

“It wasn’t that I thought it wasn’t safe. But when you have a couple of little kids, you don’t want to take chances,” said Lothian, 30, a Belmont Shore resident who spent Friday night with friends in San Juan Capistrano.