Violence Never Far From O.C. Schoolyards

Where 16-year-old Sonia comes from, the neighborhood streets are decidedly unfriendly. Rival gangs occasionally fistfight in the night. Bullets sometimes ricochet into the morning. For her, school offers a small degree of much-needed security.

Then one afternoon in September, gunfire echoed through the sanctuary of Fullerton High School. A 15-year-old boy was fatally shot a block from campus as he walked home from school.

“After the shooting, we were all scared the next day,” said Sonia, who asked along with several other students in this story that a pseudonym be used. “I walked to school with a group of friends instead of by myself like I normally do.”

For teen-agers in Orange County, such eruptions of violence are becoming all too familiar. Though it lacks the churning social upheaval that has claimed many young lives in Los Angeles, the suburban sprawl of Orange County is rife with sporadic violence that has resulted in teen-age casualties. Of the dozens of students of all ethnic groups interviewed for this story, nearly all asked that their names not be used, for fear of being misunderstood and fear of reprisals.

More than half a dozen shootings involving public school students have occurred in Orange County since class began in September, a disturbing pace of hostility that has caused concern among school officials and parents. The latest came Thursday as a high school student and a recent graduate were wounded in a drive-by shooting in normally placid Irvine.

But in schools scattered around the county, students say that everyday life on and off campus hardly mirrors such perilous incidents. Only a small fraction of the schools have experienced traumatic violence, and even on campuses where shootings have occurred pupils typically say they’ve learned to cope.

“When shootings happen, the first few days everyone talks about it and everyone gets excited about it as they’re discussing it,” said a 17-year-old senior from Santa Ana High School. But soon, “you get used to it; you get used to hearing about fights, shootings, drive-bys when you grow up in an area that has them.

“That’s life and that’s part of being a student. Violence is not dominant in school, but you know it’s there. You just know not to let it control you.”

Indeed, teen-agers are veterans at adapting to the environment around them, said John Sikorski, a San Francisco child psychiatrist and associate clinical professor at UC San Francisco Medical Center.

“All you have to do is look at the world from the eyes of children these days,” Sikorski said. “The television has all kinds of murders, violence, rape, mayhem hour after hour. They come to think this is what the world is all about. . . . So I’m not surprised that the kids seem to shrug it off.”

But such stoicism can mask inner turmoil, he said. “Inside they’re scared,” Sikorski said. “They’re scared about lots of things, besides just violence.”

Gangs seem to prompt the most anxiety among youths in some of the county’s tougher schools. But school grounds are considered “neutral territory,” and the gang members themselves often seem less ominous than their brethren up the freeway in Los Angeles, according to students and administrators.

“School ground and school-sponsored activities are one thing; anything anywhere else is something different,” said a senior at Garden Grove’s Santiago High School as he sat in the bleachers during a Thursday night football game. “This is school time, (and) that’s everybody’s time. That’s different. You leave people alone.”

Outside the neutral zone of schools, however, the turf is a free-for-all. Strangers sometimes cruise the bordering streets looking for a fight or potential victims. More often than not, drive-by or gang-related shootings near a campus involve non-student aggressors, authorities say.

But that’s not to say the risks are kept beyond the school gates.

Several students reported that some boastful classmates come to campus packing weapons ranging from screwdrivers to ice picks to switchblades and handguns. “Some people show each other their weapons during lunch hour,” said a 17-year-old senior at Irvine’s Woodbridge High. “Some are guns and some are replicas. They just want to prove who is the hard ass.”

Faculty members acknowledge that there are weapons on campus, but they say students cling to them as tools for security, for self-protection, and not for offense.

Campus aggression can also come in more subtle ways. A 16-year-old student from Huntington Beach related how a classmate refused to dress for PE class because he had been roughed up by gang members in the locker room.

The playing fields also occasionally present a problem. Chris, 17, had troubles with gang harassment during his freshman year at Esperanza High School in Anaheim. The gang members would always be on the same soccer team and other students would always allow them to win, he said.

“One day I decided I had had enough and would try to score a goal,” recalled Chris, who has since transferred to a private school. “That really upset them. They thought I was prejudiced against Latinos just because I scored a goal against them. (The taunts) went on for a couple weeks until they just got bored with me.”

The county’s changing racial and ethnic makeup has predictably caused strains among pupils on several high school campuses.

At one normally tranquil South County high school, an Anglo co-ed who transferred to escape problems at more volatile schools to the north complained that she was jumped and beaten by a group of Latino girls soon after she arrived.

Sometimes the tension can be less physical and more psychologically bruising. At Westminster’s La Quinta High School, where more than half the student body is Vietnamese-American, some students took offense that no whites were among the finalists for the homecoming court. A few angrily scrawled on ballots such resentments as “where are the white girls?!”

At Garden Grove’s Santiago High, where more than half of the students are Latinos and most of the rest are Vietnamese-American, teen-agers usually band together with classmates of the same race during breaks or after school.

“You’re just more comfortable with people who are like you and who speak your language,” explained a 16-year-old Vietnamese-born girl as she sat under a tree with three others. “You’re less different from the others when you’re with your friends who look like you do.”

Some students, however, are suspicious of the ethnic enclaves. A 16-year-old Latino who also attends Santiago High said he sometimes thinks “the Orientals are plotting against us, there are so many of them here and they all stick together.”

Scuffles have broken out between him and several Vietnamese-Americans, the 16-year-old claimed. “I don’t like them mad-dogging (giving dirty looks) me, so I don’t let them get away with it.”

One of the more common venues for trouble, students say, is the plethora of off-campus parties that are a mainstay of high school social life. Fights can occasionally break out or trouble can brew when strangers crash a party. Despite such threats, many teen-agers said they aren’t deterred.

“School is no big deal--you go because you have to. . . . It’s the parties that I worry about,” said Mike, 16, a junior at Santiago High who still religiously attends the weekend fetes. “One time I was at a party and these guys just dropped in and started to yell that they were going to shoot. No one knew what to do, so we just all dropped to the floor and covered our heads.

“Nothing happened,” he added. “It was probably just a kickback--a pay-back for someone at the party causing trouble before.”

Even in the most troubled areas, students come armed with a fearless sense of indestructibility, believing they can skirt problems. But several expressed worries about the random nature of teen-age violence and fears of getting caught in cross-fire.

“Sometimes, some people will take offense at the slightest thing and will just attack others for no reason, and some innocent standbys end up getting hurt,” said Mary, a senior at Santa Ana High School. “So, what I do is I keep my distance; I put a certain wall between me and the ones I think are troublemakers. Or I walk away from anything that looks as if it’s going to turn into a fight.”

Lately, violence has seeped into areas heretofore considered safe harbors. In Irvine on Thursday, a student at SELF Alternative School and a recent graduate of Woodbridge High were wounded as they tried to dodge a blizzard of bullets police said was fired by reputed gang members.

“This is Irvine. Things like this don’t happen in Irvine!” a distressed Woodbridge student lamented an hour after the shooting. Others reacted similarly. “This is the first time we ever heard gunshots in this area,” said one 17-year-old, who also talked of having seen guns trading hands between students for money.

News of teen-age violence can reverberate quickly. A shooting that seriously wounded a 16-year-old sophomore near El Toro High earlier this month shocked students and parents. “It hit the gossip train,” said Mary, a senior at the school. “By the time I got home my parents thought it was a big gang war.”

But calm was restored within days, and now most students at the school scoff at the idea that the campus or surrounding community presents any sort of threat. “It’s certainly not like anyone is afraid to walk home from school now,” said Julie, 16, a junior. “Everyone considers this a pretty safe area.”

At El Toro and most other campuses, worries about looming violence aren’t high on the priority list. Said one 16-year-old at Westminster’s La Quinta High School: “Not having prom dates is our biggest fear.”

But many students in the more volatile school districts say they feel safer on their closed-campus schools than anywhere else. Their fears are appeased when they see the security guards as well as the wire-meshed walls that fence off potential danger and unwelcome intruders.

“You feel easier when you see teachers or security guards walking around and police cars driving around,” said a 14-year-old sophomore from La Quinta High, pointing to school officials who were scouting the courtyard during this lunch break.

She paused, then added: “But then, you stop and think that the only reason they’re around is because things just aren’t as safe and they’re either predicting trouble or are trying to prevent it.”

Shooting Scenes

Since September, more than half a dozen shootings have occurred on or near Orange County campuses:

Nov. 19, Irvine: A student from a continuation school and a Woodbridge High School graduate were wounded in what police said was a drive-by shooting near both campuses.

Nov. 4, Lake Forest: A 16-year-old El Toro High School sophomore was seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting, a block from campus.

Oct. 2, Santa Ana: A 14-year-old Lathrop Intermediate School student was shot in the hand while walking home.

Sept. 18, Anaheim: A 15-year-old Fullerton High School student was fatally shot a block from school. Police said it was a racially motivated gang attack.

Sept. 11, Anaheim: Two teen-agers were seriously wounded just outside Loara High School in what police said was also a gang-related shooting. Also, a 17-year-old Buena Park High School student walking home from school with a friend was shot in the leg in an incident near that campus.

Sept. 10, Santa Ana: A Santa Ana police officer shot and killed a 16-year-old boy while trying to break up a fight between two rival gangs about a block from Santa Ana High School.

Source: Los Angeles Times files