24 Hours : A Day in the Life of Long Beach--in Pictures

From the harbor to the East Side, from the inner city to Belmont Shore, this was a day in the life of Long Beach, a day tinged with happiness and sadness, hope and hopelessness as residents went about their jobs, had fun, helped others--or just tried to survive.

About 60 Long Beach City College photography students spread across the 50-square-mile city Oct. 24 to capture it on film.

Before dawn, police officers and sheriff’s deputies patrolled the streets, fishermen carried bait buckets and poles out on Belmont Pier, harbor patrol dispatcher Kyle Guyot listened for distress calls, and Huong Banh put the first batch of 90 dozen doughnuts in the oven at the Angelfood Donut shop on 7th Street.

By 8, the flag had been raised over the David R. Ray in the harbor.

It was a day when the White Lightning beat the Silver Hawks, 4-1, in a youth soccer game at Heartwell Park; when Mark Olagoe, 21, broke his arm when he was thrown off the stage by a security guard at Bogart’s in Marina Pacifica Mall during a performance by Babes in Toyland, an all-girl punk band; when Henry Rocha and Gus Nunes milked cows late at night at Paul’s Dairy on Paramount Boulevard; when Evelia Soto, 15, dressed in white lace and a tiara, knelt as Father Guillermo Rodriguez said Mass as part of her Quinceanera, a Latino ritual for young women, at St. Matthew’s Church on Temple Avenue.

It was a day when Martha Boyko, 76, won a bag of cheese puffs and Juanita Ossea, 83, won a jar of applesauce during a bingo game in the Long Beach Senior Center on 4th Street.

It was a day when John McKnight and Ellyn Noderer got married in a noon ceremony in St. Matthew’s, about the same time that Miguel Ruiz, 16, whose gang name was Lil’ Green Eyes, was washing cars “for God.”

It was a day when Eddie Deluna, 20, ran out of luck. He walked into Alpha Burgers on Artesia Boulevard, brandishing a handgun and demanding money. The owner shot him in the stomach, and Deluna died.

It was a day when Mayor Ernie Kell’s 88-year old mother, Katherine Kell, read a National Geographic magazine in her son’s El Dorado Park Estates home; when Carlos and James, in the final throes of AIDS, rested in the Padua House hospice; when a duck, a possum, a hen, 24 dogs and 27 cats were fed and locked up at the Long Beach Animal Shelter; when Amir Chouchan, a pilot and flight instructor, waited at the Long Beach Flying Club for the remains of a Texas woman so he could scatter her ashes over the beach, and when Christine Beshears, 39, became homecoming queen at City College.

It was a day that many will never be able to distinguish from all the rest, but that some will remember forever.