Thieves Leave Messages of Hate Behind : Crime: Owner, who just moved his recording business to the county, considers relocating.

When Tony Pinero’s offices burned in the Los Angeles riots this summer, he moved his struggling recording business to Santa Ana, hoping for a new start.

But Pinero found himself fighting much the same sort of panic and fear this week after discovering hate messages spray-painted across the walls of his office and more than $100,000 in damage and theft.

Now, he is thinking of moving again--out of Orange County.

Pinero, president of AWP Entertainment, was driven from his Hollywood Boulevard office during the second night of rioting. A 15-year resident of Irvine, he decided to shift his business to Orange County.

But Monday morning, when he opened the office on the 2000 block of West 4th Street, Pinero discovered that his recording equipment and files had been stolen. Vandals had also scrawled racist messages including “Go Back to Africa” on the walls. The sight, Pinero said, “mentally destroyed” him.

Pinero tentatively plans to return to his native Brooklyn, N.Y. “I get a strong feeling from many that they don’t like blacks or other minorities here.”

Santa Ana Police are investigating Monday’s incident but have no suspects, Sgt. Art Echternacht said.

The doors of five other offices in the business complex also were hit with racist epitaphs, swastikas and Nazi slogans, but Pinero’s was the hardest hit.

One of the tenants, who did not want to be identified, said she feared that the vandals might return.

Rusty Kennedy, the director of the county’s Human Relations Commission, said 125 hate crimes were reported in 1991, “and this year it looks like it’s on the same pace. In terms of white supremacists, it doesn’t happen around here very often . . . but too often.”

Kennedy also said racist vandals tend to become more blatant during economically tough periods and look for scapegoats.

The vandalism “is the first hate crime I’ve heard about this year” in Santa Ana, Echternacht said, “and the first one for quite some time.”

Meanwhile, Pinero, who said he has spent 12 years in the entertainment business with clients such as Little Anthony and the Imperials, now must try to recover financially and emotionally.

“I have to relocate; I can’t deal with this,” Pinero said. “I’m a young black man trying to make an honest living and they won’t let me.”