UNDERSTANDING THE RIOTS--SIX MONTHS LATER : Touched by Fire / A Legacy of Pain and Hope : IMAGES : Fire at Apartment House Was Just the Beginning of Building’s Troubles

For many Californians, the riots were more than a momentary blip on the screen--they were a flash point for lasting and fundamental changes in their lives. The devastation left a legacy of broken dreams for many, awakened a sense of social justice in some, unleashed anger and hatred in others, and rekindled a spirit of hope among others. Six months after the riots, Times reporters visited some of the people and places touched by the extraordinary events of last spring and on these pages we tell their stories.

The riots had nothing to do with the tenants at 330 S. New Hampshire Ave.

But after an arson fire at a neighbor ing site destroyed part of the Wil shire-district building during the unrest, everything changed.

Today, the concrete and stucco apartment building stands like a ghost of itself. The wing where 18 apartments burned is still empty, its reconstruction only partly complete.

Though the flames never touched the rest of the building, the repercussions of the fire swept throughout, emptying out all but 15 of the remaining 36 apartments.

The sudden blaze became a flash point for longstanding frustrations--of tenants and landlord alike--over a once-immaculate building that seemed to be sliding downhill, and a neighborhood mirroring that descent.

But it also became a catalyst for change, empowering some of the tenants to improve their lives.

“That fire was a blessing in disguise,” said Sandra Pruitt, a hospital administrative assistant and paralegal student, who briefly organized a rent strike among her fellow tenants after the blaze.

Around the city, 29 apartment buildings and 32 homes were damaged or destroyed by arson fires set during the unrest--most of them in the Koreatown and Pico-Union areas, where rioting was intense.

About midday on the riots’ second day--as stores in the vicinity were being looted--a building under construction on South New Hampshire burst into flames, sending sparks flying onto the walls of the apartment complex next door.

Dark smoke choked the halls, sending screaming tenants fleeing outside, clutching their frightened children.

No one was hurt, but the tenants all felt the desolation that followed, as they confronted the blackened, twisted metal in the burned-out wing, walked water-soaked hallways, and woke up for days afterward to the lingering, acrid smell of smoke.

Tenants from the damaged area were the first to leave. For a few days, not knowing where to turn, some tried to sleep under ceilings collapsing with water left by firefighters, or on sopping-wet mattresses, their children coughing in air dank with mildew.

Then, they began to move out, some to government-subsidized units made available after the riots, others to nearby buildings the landlord owned, or to places they found on their own. For those who stayed, the turmoil erupted almost immediately. As tenants tried to cope with the devastation and their lost sense of security, the landlord “asked for rent,” tenant Rodrigo Vega recalled.

Landlord Jerry Goldstein denies asking for rent. “We gave them a free month because they had a hardship,” he said. But when June came around, many still refused to pay, he said, leaving the apartment owners reeling from the lost income, on top of the $700,000 in damage to the building from the fire.

On top of that, the company that insured the loss failed after the riots, leaving the owners unable to complete their repairs. “We’ve got big bills to pay and the rent’s not coming in,” Goldstein said. “So we have a problem.”

When Goldstein, managing partner for the owner-investors, visited the building after the fire, he found the tenants’ anger so intense that he called police to escort him away. “I’ve had a bodyguard ever since,” he said.

Now, new tenants are not easy to find. “For Rent” signs are hanging from buildings all over the neighborhood. “There are a lot of vacancies,” Goldstein noted, “a combination of the riots and the recession.”

Tenants say that even before the fire, the building had become unsafe, with vagrants able to bypass the security system at night and prowl the halls.

In the fire’s aftermath, when gaping holes provided even easier access for prowlers and derelicts, many tenants decided they could endure no more. The flames had turned their irritation into anger.

The turmoil of the displaced renters spurred the remaining tenants to voice their simmering grievances over maintenance, security and the tough-talking style of the building manager, Beatrice Codon, a 76-year-old former member of the U.S. Women’s Army Corps.

“The fire brought everything to light,” Pruitt said. “We saw how the building was starting not to be taken care of and the insensitivity of the manager, the way she refused to treat people as adults.”

During the summer, most of the remaining tenants--strangers before then--started meeting at the McDonald’s around the corner. For the first time, they talked as a group about what they wanted done at the building, how to press for better conditions and whether they should risk eviction by withholding their rent.

Goldstein disputed that the building was badly kept. Tenants “just wanted to get away with free rent as long as they could,” he said. “They took advantage of the situation is all that happened.”

Like many of the other residents, Pruitt is now grateful for the upheaval that resulted, because she ended up moving to a building she considers better kept.

Sharon Huntley first decided to withhold her rent, then moved out with her three children last month after Goldstein initiated eviction proceedings against her and nine other tenants.

Cockroaches skittered across Huntley’s kitchen as she carried boxes out. Graffiti were scrawled on one stairwell wall. Inside the elevator, thick paint failed to hide words that had been scratched into the paneled walls, and cleaning fluid could not disguise the strong smell of urine.

“I came out one morning and there was a homeless man sleeping against my door,” said Huntley as she packed to leave.

Rita Vega decided to stay because she thinks the building is improving as fire-damaged repairs get made. But she misses the tenants’ organizing efforts, she said with regret: “They gave up.”

Maria Aquino left. The 32-year-old Guatemalan housekeeper said she was no longer willing to wait for a carpet full of holes to be replaced, or to deal with manager Codon, a woman Aquino described as “always yelling” at those unfamiliar with English.

She stopped paying rent for two months to save money to move to a new apartment, and then she left.

Codon has remained, and, like Pruitt, she too considers the fire an odd sort of blessing. “I’m happy now,” she declared one morning. “We got rid of the troublemakers.”

As new people come in and repairs are made, memories of the turmoil are fading, Rita Vega said. The tenants have become friendlier toward one another and feel freer now to press for changes.

“Everything is better now,” Vega said. “You don’t feel the tension the way you did when the riots happened.”