In Search of Peace : Latino immigrants who left their homes for better lives in L.A., are moving again. They are settling in quiet suburbs such as Thousand Oaks to flee crime and find jobs.

Luis Fernando Gatica’s image of Los Angeles was drawn from the TV cop shows he watched in his native Guatemala City.

From “Hunter,” “CHiPs” and others, he thought the city was a clean place that was tough on law and order.

But that image crumbled soon after he arrived in Pico-Union in 1990. On his way to work at a fast-food restaurant, Gatica was attacked by a gang that called itself “La 34.” They spray painted him and threatened to kill him unless he joined them.

“I was afraid for my life,” Gatica recalls. “I began to think that Guatemala was better than Los Angeles. That’s when I began to think about going someplace cleaner and safer.”

That place was about 50 miles north in an oasis of calm called Thousand Oaks. Gatica is part of a swelling number of double migrants , Latino immigrants who are heading to the outer suburbs for the same reasons as other Angelenos--to flee crime, poor living conditions and the lack of jobs.

In areas like Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village and Malibu, crime is lower and the lifestyle is tranquilo . Even if migrants find trade-offs like higher rents, poor public transportation and feelings of isolation, they say they would not return to Los Angeles.

The biggest draw, immigration experts say, is jobs.

Unlike urban Los Angeles or its older suburbs, these outer communities are still developing, so the demand for short-term labor is high.

“You’ll find people that were regulars on corners in Los Angeles are now finding limited work opportunities,” says Cathy Mahon, coordinator of legal services for the Central American Refugee Center in Los Angeles. “People can get more work in areas that are being newly built.”

Indeed, many who used to gather in Pico-Union and other traditional immigrant centers, can make up to $50 a day working for landscapers and building crews here. Delivering newspapers, Gatica makes almost twice what he did flipping burgers in Santa Monica.

The arrival of “double migrants” has been met mixed reaction. While churches have welcomed them, some residents have complained of overcrowding and are concerned with public safety.

The number of laborers--mostly single young men in their 20s and 30s who are working in the United States temporarily--have been noticeably increasing during the last five years. In Thousand Oaks, for example, the number has nearly doubled from 5.8% of the population in 1980 to 10% in 1990--partly attributable, experts say, to double migration. Today, about 10,000 Latinos make their home in this city, many of them migrants from Mexico, Central and South America.

At St. Paschal Baylon Catholic Church, the Latino congregation has risen from a few hundred families to more than 1,000, says Yvette Renner, who coordinates the church’s Latino ministry.

The migrants form mini-enclaves in low-rent apartment complexes or on single blocks in modest neighborhoods.

In Thousand Oaks, one complex on Warwick Street is widely known as “The Yucatan Peninsula” because there are hundreds of migrants from that southeastern Mexican state. Across town, a two-square block north of the Ventura Freeway has been dubbed “Tijuanita.”

Many migrants must live together because the rents are much higher than in Los Angeles. Two-bedroom apartments in the shabbier areas of Thousand Oaks range from $650 to $900.

“We all live together because I don’t earn enough to live alone,” says Mario Cano, 37, from Pachuca, Mexico. He earns $5 an hour at a nursery and shares a room in a two-bedroom apartment on Warwick Street with a brother and six other men. The unit rents for $900.

Many migrants glide around town on bicycles because public transportation is lacking. Unlike more urban areas, many newer communities are built with only the auto in mind.

Jose Gonzales, 32, of Durango, arrived here two years ago from Pico-Union. He began bicycling to work at an assembly plant cross town, but the 6-mile ride would take an hour from his apartment in the Westlake area of Thousand Oaks.

When it rains, Gonzales must walk a half-mile to the bus stop and wait for the Thousand Oaks transit system’s hourly run.

“I can’t go shopping for a lot food, because I have no way to carry it,” he says. “One day, I got sick and none of my friends had a car, so I had to stay home.”

Living in the suburbs away from other Latinos can be a lonely existence. Though they often live together, there are few things that single migrants like Cano miss more than their families. Cano manages to send them $500 to $600 a month from the pay earns as a custodian at a hotel.

Each December, Cano goes back to Pachuca to see his wife and children.

“We all want to go back,” Cano says. But he has never considered moving to Los Angeles. “Working in Los Angeles is like working in Mexico City. It’s too dense there. I like working here.”

Down the hall from Cano are Maria and Jorge Martin, a family from the Yucatan peninsula who came directly to Thousand Oaks based on the advice of relatives who were already here.

From their second-story window, the view seems like another world.

Laundry flutters on clotheslines and balconies are crowded with bicycles. The sound of Mexican corridos and mariachi music floats through open windows.

When neighbors call to each other across the complex, it is in Spanish.

“It’s like a barrio here in this complex,” says Jorge Martin, 32. “There’s a lot of people from the Yucatan here.”

In many of the apartments, residents have hung photos of the places they call home. Portraits of Jesus and the Virgen of Guadalupe hang side by side in the Martins’ living room, along with a portrait of Maria Martin’s grandmother.

The suburbs are safer, more like the rural provinces of Mexico, Maria Martin says. She takes walks to a local park with her 2-year-old daughter and meets friends.

The high wages Jorge Martin earns working at a local hotel have allowed them to afford a car. While many of the other women in Maria Martin’s complex clean houses, she has been able to stay at home with her daughter.

“I don’t think I could stay home if I were in Los Angeles,” she says.

At night when she strolls around the city, she can do so without fear of being accosted or robbed. The Martins have also been able to help relatives find jobs. About 20 have found their way from the city of Merida to Ventura County.

Not everyone is happy about this city’s double migrants.

Last year, owners of a Montessori school complained of the presence of day laborers who met each morning on a street corner to find work.

At a condominium complex filled with a large number of Latinos, Anglo residents repeatedly complained at council meetings about problems caused by overcrowding. Earlier this year, the City Council passed an ordinance intended to solve complaints of overcrowding and the Sheriff’s Department has stepped up patrols.

Lori Hartin, 37, says conditions around her neighborhood began to deteriorate about five years ago.

“One night a lot of migrants got drunk and jumped on my husband’s car and broke our mailbox,” says Hartin, a 20-year resident. “I don’t feel safe. I just have fears of our neighborhoods being turned into barrios.”

Still, City Manager Grant R. Brimhall said instances where migrants clash with the mostly Anglo population are few.

Unlike neighboring Agoura Hills, where the presence of hundreds of day laborers prompted the city to ban solicitation of work on street corners, Thousand Oaks officials have been reluctant to intervene, even though some businesses and homeowners have called for a crackdown.

Many of the workers have steady jobs, and when they do look for work on street corners, it is away from well-traveled thoroughfares, Brimhall says.

“Even though some of the workers are not documented aliens, there are still certain rights that they have,” he says.

There was a time for these migrants when leaving Los Angeles meant leaving behind the things familiar to their culture. Today, Latinos can find almost anything they need in Thousand Oaks: Latin American music, videos and food, even hairdressers and travel agents who speak Spanish.

Two new Latino video stores have opened in the last three years, and Mi Tienda, a grocery store that specializes in food from Central and South America as well as the Caribbean and Mexico, opened in a strip mall last year.

“They say ‘I need a certain food, but I also need someone who understands me,’ ” says Mi Tienda owner Laura Melgar.

Bags of pungent teas from Argentina and Brazil, yellow cherries from Guatemala, red olives from Peru and beer from Honduras line the shelves. Several years ago, residents had to travel to Oxnard or to the San Fernando Valley to find a Spanish-speaking shopkeeper, Melgar says.

“They come here and say, ‘Oh, good, I’m glad I don’t have to go to L.A. anymore.’ ”