CLOSE-UP

William Torro, 57, met the Lord for the first time when he was 3 years old, living in a Pennsylvania orphanage. When, as a teen-ager, Torro moved to Los Angeles, they sort of lost touch: During the ‘60s, Torro was one of the “brains” of the Diamond Gang, a group of Echo Park outlaws. But while Torro was doing time, the Lord returned and informed the delinquent that he had more important things in mind for him. So when the owner of the Echo Park boathouse offered him a job, Torro considered it a sign. It was.

For four years, he learned the rental boat business, but when a job in Beverly Hills beckoned, he left. Then, in 1977, when Torro was working as the night bookkeeper at the Sunset Marquis, Benjamin Harris, the boathouse owner, asked him if he wanted to buy the business. “I told him I was making good money and I didn’t want to go back to Echo Park,” Torro says.

But once again, God had other plans. “I argued with the Lord all night. The Lord asked if I would be a yielded vessel for him and go back to Echo Park. The Lord assured me I would be taken care of.”

He was. With the boat rentals, the video arcade and the snack bar, Torro says his operation makes more than $100,000 a year. But community, not money, he adds, is the main draw. Although he is the minister of music at Victory in Christ Church in Temple City, where he was ordained in 1985, Torro stays close to his boats, and his roots. “A lot of young gang members come to the boathouse and ask me for help. These are people who don’t go to church. I offer them counseling and hope. I talk to their parents. If I have some work to be done around the place, I give local teen-agers part-time jobs. I marry gang members and perform gang funerals for free when other churches won’t have anything to do with them.” He has, in fact, been named the honorary mayor of Echo Park by the area’s chamber of commerce. “Echo Park is my community,” he says. “This boathouse and the people who live around here are my calling. It’s a marvelous life.”