Businessman Gambles on Talking With Taggers--and It Pays Off : Vandalism: Tired of his gas station being covered in graffiti, the owner sought a meeting with gangbangers. Some say the move was foolish, but it seems to have brought him relief.

When members of the “VST” gang spray-painted their names on Van Pfister’s San Fernando Valley gas station a few weeks ago, Pfister struck back in a novel way.

He walked down the street with a cardboard placard on which he had drawn a plea: “VST Speak to Me.”

For three hours, Pfister, 53, a self-described “gringo in shorts,” stood on a corner in the VST turf in his Mission Hills neighborhood, displaying his sign and talking to passersby.

Finally, shortly after 10 p.m., he was led down an alley for a street-level parley with about 15 gang members.

“I told them that ‘I just thought if I came out and introduced myself, maybe you’d leave me alone,’ ” Pfister said last week. “I told them: ‘I’m not here to find out who did anything. I just want to talk to you man to man. If I was your Dad with a business and he had to paint out graffiti every single day, how would you feel?’

“They finally told me that if I had the guts to go out and talk to them, they’d leave me alone. It seemed to work,” he said, “because they haven’t been out here since.”

Some praise Pfister’s attempt to reach out to a gang, to practice neighborhood diplomacy, to defuse a confrontation instead of wielding a gun or a lawsuit. They say it was an act of courage that, in these cynical and fearful times, elicited a promise instead of scorn.

But prosecutors and police say it was also lunacy.

What Pfister did “represents the tremendous frustration . . . that people have,” said Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, head of operations for the Los Angeles Police Department in the San Fernando Valley. “After a while, you just wake up in the night and say, ‘What is it I can do to stop this?’ ”

But “as far as recommending that approach, I can’t,” Kroeker said. “While it worked here, it could prove to be disastrous. . . . Not every group of gang members would treat him the same way in the alley.”

Deputy City Atty. Jule Bishop, who prosecutes gang members, said: “If they have vandalized his property, it seems safe to assume that they don’t care about his welfare. I think the view of law enforcement and prosecutors would be that this man is a fool.”

Pfister said he was merely desperate.

Like many business owners in Los Angeles, he found himself working harder and harder this summer to keep his gas station operating in the black. His revenues were down because the region’s sour economy and job losses were causing people to drive less. To make matters worse, he was spending $400 a month on paint and wearing out his arm covering the scrawls of taggers that considered his white walls an inviting canvas.

In July, he allowed a group of youths to do an elaborate purple, green and blue mural on the rear of his station. He figured the mural might discourage random tagging, and it appeared to be working. Then the gang’s name was sprayed across the front of his building and on the pavement of the station at the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Rinaldi Street.

Police said the members of the VST gang, although they number only between 30 and 45, are potentially as violent as the infamous and much larger Blythe Street gang that claims adjacent turf. Members of VST--which stands for Valerio Street--have allied themselves with Blythe Street, the target of a far-reaching civil injunction that prohibits many otherwise legal activities by gang members. In reaction to the injunction, some of the Blythe Street gang’s drug dealing has moved into territory claimed by Valerio Street, police say.

Earlier this summer, police arrested a number of Valerio Street gang members; they were sent to jail for several violent assaults. Although they still use the Valerio Street name, most of the gang members have moved elsewhere and come back to the street only to hang out.

Pfister said the VST graffiti got his attention because it told him that a street gang--not merely individual vandals--was bedeviling him.

But he said that in middle age, with a wife and two young children, he could not afford to run. Crime and graffiti had hurt business and driven away the Radio Shack outlet in the mall where his station is located. The Army and Navy surplus store had shut down as well. “The gang guys wanted to establish this as their turf,” he said. “But this is my turf. I figured, ‘What the hell are they going to do, beat me up?’ Maybe it was stupidity on my part.”

If it was foolish, it appears that Pfister’s gesture earned some measure of respect.

A few days later, a bare-chested young man came into his station and bought a soda. Pfister noticed “VST” tattooed on his back and called to him.

The youth told Pfister he had heard about him. “Then he said, ‘I had to see who you were,’ ” the gas station owner said.

Those who work with gang members are awed by Pfister’s simple act of reconciliation. But they also warn others not to try it.

“He should be written up as a community hero” for trying to talk to gang members instead of thinking of them as a faceless force of evil, said Pam Beck, clinical director of New Directions for Youth, a Van Nuys agency that provides counseling, job training and schooling to gang members.

“In a way, we want the whole community to get involved like that but, on the other hand, we don’t want people putting themselves in danger.”