Making Her Own Mark Against Taggers : Sylmar Woman Organized a Cleanup Group and Has Personally Collared Some Vandals

Every now and then, we are presented with examples of the kind of citizen involvement that is crucial in a city with a badly outnumbered police force. One such example was Viviana Guerra, a North Hollywood woman whose testimony has led to the conviction of five criminal street gang members. Another who has to be considered in the same light is Hannah Dyke of Sylmar, who has personally arrested eight graffiti vandals. The diminutive Dyke brings new meaning to the term “command presence.”

On one such occasion in 1991, this scourge of Valley taggers, age 58 at the time, followed a young teen-ager from the scene of his crime to a local convenience store. Inside, she told the astonished youth that she was making a citizen’s arrest. Dyke ordered him to empty his pockets and to wait there until the police arrived.

He did.

Dyke’s good works have included the co-founding of the 5-year-old Sylmar Graffiti Busters, a group which now uses Los Angeles city funds and private donations to coordinate 25,000 hours of cleanup work a year in a 27-square-mile area. The workers are referred to Dyke’s program by local courts and many of them are apprehended taggers. It was after a day of such work, on the most recent Super Bowl Sunday, that she caught one of her charges tagging a pole. Dyke and her husband drove up alongside and ordered him into their van. They then drove him straight to the LAPD’s Foothill Station for arrest.

“I’m a gray-haired old lady, but I think young and I behave young,” Dyke says. “I choose my locations. I won’t do anything stupid.”

Unfortunately, Dyke and her husband of 40 years will soon retire to a 300-acre spread in Arkansas. But in the Sylmar Graffiti Busters, she has helped to create a vigorous group of involved citizens who seem certain to carry on her struggle with genuine enthusiasm.

Dyke has also set an example that others would do well to follow. “This city doesn’t have to go downhill,” she admonishes. “Just get off your duff and do something about it.”