Tag of Honor : Graffiti Foe Receives Clashing Tributes on Retirement

Hannah Dyke, who helped found the Sylmar Graffiti Busters five years ago, has garnered many accolades for her anti-tagging crusade, with the most recent coming last week from the Los Angeles City Council and county Board of Supervisors.

But none speak quite so eloquently of her work’s impact as that bestowed by the very tagging crews she has battled on a daily basis: an obscene, two-letter tag referring specifically to her.

“It was almost like a tribute to her and her perseverance and determination in putting some of these people out of business,” said Sgt. Ken Roth of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division. “So they made up a crew name in her honor, but it wasn’t very pleasant.”

After half a decade as one of the most visible spokespersons for the fight against graffiti, the 60-year-old former Department of Motor Vehicles manager is retiring. Many lament her decision to move to Arkansas with her husband of 40 years.

“I wish we could either clone her or persuade her to stay in Los Angeles,” said Nancy Oliva, field deputy for City Councilman Hal Bernson, whose district covers the northwest Valley. “She’s made an incredible impact.”

Roth, who has known Dyke for about four years, said her work has made Sylmar a better place to live and own a home.

“There are other anti-graffiti programs. But hers is one of the more successful, and as a result most of the taggers decided to leave Sylmar alone and go to other areas.”

The Sylmar group also removes graffiti under a contract with the city. Roth said he has met with Tom Weissbarth, who will succeed Dyke, and Graffiti Busters co-founder Charlotte Bedard, to discuss continuing that mission.

In addition to a devoted corps of volunteers, the group has a warehouse, two vans, a pickup truck and two sandblasters.

In the last five years, Dyke has collected $2,250 in reward money for the arrest and conviction of taggers. She has made eight arrests herself, and through court referrals has put dozens of convicted taggers to work cleaning up graffiti.

“You’ve got to learn to think like they do,” Dyke said. “There’s not a day that goes by when I can’t make an arrest for tagging.”

Displaying an uncanny ability to decipher the distinctive tagger scrawl, Dyke can identify both the writer responsible and the crew to which he or she belongs.

“We’ll be picking him up soon,” she said recently after pointing out the name of a writer on the side of a Sylmar building. “He’d better start counting his days.”

Back in 1975, Dyke herself was counting her days, having been diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live.

She quit her job with the DMV, where she worked for more than 20 years, and managed to beat the odds.

“I’m a fighter, and cancer was just one of my roadblocks,” Dyke said.

Later, she turned her attention to fighting some of the ills plaguing her community and became active in the Sylmar Independent Baseball League, the Olive View Neighborhood Watch and the Sylmar Coordinating Council.

On the subject of graffiti, Dyke minces no words.

“They’re vandals and people might as well know they’re costing them millions and millions of dollars,” she said.

Dyke said she has received a few annoying phone calls from taggers, including one who ended up doing 75 hours of community service after his call was traced. She emphasized that fear has nothing to do with her decision to relocate to Arkansas.

“This is not running scared or white flight,” she said. “We have 300 acres back there.”