A Woman of Respect : Violence: Community mourns Ramona Gardens gang counselor Ana Lizarraga, who was gunned down execution-style outside her home.

Hundreds of family members and friends crowded into Santa Teresita Church in Boyle Heights on Wednesday and others gathered outside to pay final respects to a woman who had earned a reputation on the streets for respecting her neighbors.

Ana Lizarraga, 49, a gang counselor to a generation of youths at the Ramona Gardens housing project in East Los Angeles, was fatally shot last week in an ambush attack by two masked gunmen. A man has been arrested in the slaying and faces murder charges.

Nearly every youth and parent in the tightknit community had crossed paths with Lizarraga, a top counselor with Community Youth Gang Services who dedicated her career to cooling the tempers of enraged gang members, admonishing youngsters to stay in school and telling parents how to keep children out of gangs.

“Everybody knew her. Everybody respected her,” said Robert Luquin, 30, a former gang member and Ramona Gardens tenant who had known Lizarraga since he was a boy. “She understood us and knew how to help when we were in trouble. This is a big loss for us.”

On Wednesday morning hundreds of neighbors from the project where she grew up filed past her silver-blue coffin, many making the sign of the cross and weeping. When the small white church filled up, her friends stood out on the street straining to hear the eulogy.

Father Juan Santillan, Lizarraga’s close friend, described her as a spiritual woman who “planted seeds of hope” in and around Ramona Gardens, the oldest city-run housing project.

“I don’t want to dwell on the tragedy of her death. Tragedy is made from humans,” Santillan said. “Ana’s hope was in her heart. There is no doubt in my mind that she was a servant of God.”

Lizarraga, who was a technical adviser and had a small part in the Latino gang film “American Me,” was shot execution-style last Wednesday in her driveway on Lancaster Avenue. Two men with stockings over their heads apparently waited for her to step outside her house and then fired several times at her from less than 10 feet away.

A passing police officer witnessed the shooting and arrested one man. The other fled and is the focus of a “very active investigation,” police said Wednesday.

On Monday, the district attorney’s office filed a murder charge, with special circumstances of lying in wait, against Jose Gilbert Gonzales, 29. A second charge of use of a firearm was also filed. Gonzales, a gang member who was released from Folsom prison last month after serving two years for a weapons possession conviction, will be arraigned next week. He faces the death penalty if convicted on the murder charge.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Frank J. Johnson of the organized crime unit has been assigned to the case but would not comment on the possible motive for the killing.

Los Angeles Police Detective Robert Suter said, “It is not clear to us what the motive is. We do not feel it was related to the movie.”

The film, which starred and was directed by Edward James Olmos, depicts Latino prison gangs and the violent rise of the Mexican Mafia in Los Angeles. Olmos portrayed a Mexican Mafia leader in Folsom prison.

Lizarraga took a four-month leave of absence in 1991 from her job with Community Youth Gang Services to become a paid adviser on the film.

Even though gang violence is not uncommon in Ramona Gardens, Lizarraga’s murder has left young and old searching for answers.

“No one understands why this happened. Everyone is in shock,” said Rosa Alvidrez, 28. “This was someone who would invite us to her house on holidays.”

The death also stunned Lizarraga’s co-workers, who make their living cruising gang turf, searching for youths in trouble and attempting to mediate street flare-ups. A common task of gang services counselors is to stand stoically on the sidelines during gang funerals in case grief turns to acts of revenge.

“Me and Ana, we used to go to a lot of gang funerals. She was my first supervisor, my trainer,” said Ed Turley, who is now manager of the South-Central Los Angeles office of gang services. “I keep thinking right now of how she used to tell the families that their son was in a better place.”

As they have many times before, a cluster of gang services workers stood a short distance from the burial site at Resurrection Cemetery on Wednesday. But as Lizarraga’s family sang “Happy Birthday” to acknowledge her 50th birthday next month, her co-workers hugged each other.

“This is tough on all of us,” Turley said. “We all know the potential dangers of our jobs. Finally it has touched us.”