Customers and Merchants Try to Restore Harmony After Looting : Aftermath: The psychological wear and tear are evident in Valley shops hardest hit by the violence.

Clothing merchant Surinder Kaur looked at her customers a little differently Saturday.

“I know some of the looters were my customers . . . They knew what they wanted,” she said, surveying her stall at Panorama City’s Valley Indoor Swap Meet, which was looted April 30. “They went for the leather--$15,000 worth.”

Henry Berry and his two daughters were looking at clothing in an adjacent stall.

“I’m glad these businesses weren’t burned, but something had to happen. There was just too much anger. Sometimes it’s the only way they’ll pay attention to black people,” Berry said, referring to the unrest following the not-guilty verdicts for the four Los Angeles police officers in the Rodney G. King beating. “I didn’t want anybody to get hurt, but sometimes you’ve got to do things.”

The words of Kaur and Berry were part of a nervous rapprochement that was occurring Saturday between customers and merchants in riot-torn areas of the northeastern San Fernando Valley. Although businesses in the area suffered nowhere near the damage done to those elsewhere in the city, the psychological wear and tear on business owners and customers alike remains evident.

It can be seen in the strained efforts at politeness, the cool glances that pass between customers and clerks and, in some cases, the relief shared by both that businesses were spared.

On the surface, things were back to normal at the Valley Indoor Swap Meet at Parthenia Street and Tobias Avenue as hundreds of customers shopped at the dozens of stalls where clothing, sporting goods, shoes, audio and video equipment and other items are sold. But some merchants, such as Kaur, remained unnerved by the still-fresh memory of finding her stall looted after about 50 people rampaged through the store.

“The people who hit here are the people who live here,” said Mike, who sells televisions and audio equipment in his stall. “It was our daily customers . . . It was time for revenge.”

To prove his point, Mike, who would not give his last name, described an encounter Saturday morning with a man who walked up to the stall and commented: “You didn’t get hit very much.”

“No, not too much,” Mike replied.

“Yeah, I know, we left you alone,” the man told him before walking away.

“I was stunned,” Mike recounted later. After operating a stall in the swap meet for five years, the riots have forced him to consider quitting.

“I’m nervous. If anything like this happens again, I’m gone,” said Mike, who had $5,000 in equipment stolen.

A few miles away in Pacoima, merchants and customers at a mini-mall vandalized by rioters breathed a collective sigh of relief that some businesses emerged unscathed.

At Leon’s Liquor on Glenoaks Boulevard near Gain Street, the Korean-American proprietor and several black customers talked about how happy they were that the store was undamaged--unlike many other Korean-run stores in predominantly black neighborhoods. The other four businesses in the mini-mall suffered some vandalism and one was partially burned.

“The relationship between blacks and Koreans is up in flames in South Central. But here in Pacoima, we do it a little better,” said Brian Henry, 15, as he chatted amiably with co-owner Michael Song.

“They didn’t do this store because they treat you fair, unlike some other places,” said Leo Sowell, 41, who said he drives out of his way to shop there.

“We expected trouble,” said Song, who slept in the store for six days to protect it. “We’ve always treated people with respect . . . I guess they remember that.”

Song said that once, when a longtime customer fell ill, he even delivered groceries to her. He said other Korean merchants need to work harder to develop trust with African-Americans.

Two other businesses in the mini-mall were closed. Other nearby merchants were reluctant to be interviewed, saying they wanted to put the riots and the verdicts that touched them off behind them.

“The trouble’s over. It’s quiet now. Let’s move on,” said Kathy of Kathy’s Coiffure Emporium, where several windows were broken. “Enough has been said about it,” said Kathy who would not give her last name. “It wasn’t right and we all know that, but we don’t talk about it any more.”

At the family-run San Carlo Deli & Imports in Panorama City, there is no optimism, only anger and pain, owner Vito Simplicio said.

The boarded-up deli at Parthenia Street and Cedros Avenue was looted twice--once in broad daylight--and partially burned. Simplicio said he does not plan to reopen and is bitter that residents he served for nearly 18 years would turn on him.

“We built it from scratch. I worked two jobs just to build that store and look what happened,” Simplicio said in a telephone interview from his home. “Our life was in there and they destroyed it--everything. They were savages.

“There is a pile of trash where I used to have a dream,” he added. “Every night I have nightmares about this. I can’t seem to put it out of my mind.”