Neighborhood Peace Torn by Bitter Dispute

Tegra Vetrovec liked the neighborhood the moment she saw it.

Built around a quiet cul-de-sac, it was a small patch of suburban heaven. Kids frolicked freely on the street, and their thirtysomething parents commuted to good jobs. Their homes were lower-priced starter models but spacious and well-kept.

Though she was the only African-American on the block, Vetrovec felt any resentment would dissolve when white residents got to know her as a good Christian woman. In any event, the spic-and-span neighborhood was a perfect spot to raise her daughters, Samantha, 3 1/2, and Erica, 16 months.

“I could really see myself and my kids in that picture,” Vetrovec said. She and her husband, Jim, a shopping mall security chief who is white and Latino, bought a three-bedroom home on Desert Willow Lane, no money down, in March.

But Tegra Vetrovec’s dreams of suburban quietude quickly disintegrated after she told a neighbor woman that a teen-age girl who lived nearby had been sexually molested by a local man.

That explosive accusation touched off a bitter neighborhood feud that has dragged on since July. And early Friday morning, the quarrel burst into public view when an unknown vandal spray-painted racial slurs and obscenities on the home of a neighborhood friend of Vetrovec’s who had been baby-sitting her youngest girl.

Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies said Sunday that they are investigating the incident as a hate crime but had made no arrests.

By midday Sunday, Vetrovec and supportive neighbors had erased the slurs from the home of Mary Jane Dunn, a widow who lives several doors down from Vetrovec. But in the midst of that chore, Vetrovec and a woman from up the block engaged in a screaming match that reduced one of Vetrovec’s daughters to tears.

“I’m a prisoner in my own home, my marriage is in jeopardy, my kids’ safety is in jeopardy and my health is shot to hell,” said a sobbing Vetrovec, who makes children’s clothing and furniture in her home. She was hospitalized several days last week for vomiting and asthma attacks that, she said, are related to stress from the feud.

She accused white families on the street of being behind the spray-painting. But the neighbors vehemently denied any involvement, and charged that Vetrovec is a busybody who has stirred up the neighborhood by spreading nasty rumors.

“We never lived like this before. This all started when she moved in. And I wish she’d leave,” said Suzanne Miller, who lives across the street from Vetrovec.

Miller and her husband, Randy, denied involvement in the racial attack. They said they don’t object to Vetrovec because of her race, but because she has thrown their peaceful neighborhood into an uproar.

“We’re not prejudiced,” said Suzanne Miller. “We have black friends over here all the time. Our friends, Dave and Wanda, have a mixed marriage.”

The Millers said they believe that Vetrovec or a friend of hers did the spray-painting.

“She’s not happy unless there’s trouble,” said Suzanne Miller. “She stirs things up. She doesn’t have a job. This is excitement for her.”

Vetrovec denied that she did the spray-painting, saying she still was in the hospital when it was done.

Both sides agree that the feud began when Vetrovec told Suzanne Miller that a 14-year-girl said a local man had molested her on a fishing trip.

The man later confronted Vetrovec, yelling obscenities at her in her front yard, she said.

The situation escalated further when Vetrovec accused a white teen-age girl of burning Vetrovec’s daughter Erica on the nose with a cigarette lighter while baby-sitting. The teen-ager’s parents denied that such an incident took place.

Vetrovec said that when her two daughters ventured into the street the next day, neighborhood youngsters pelted them with apple cores, pencils and wads of paper.

“My kids were standing in the middle of the street, crying,” she said. “I ran across the street and told them, ‘If you ever touch my kids again, I’ll kill you.’ ” After that, she said, several neighbors began to treat her coldly.

On Sunday afternoon, Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Reinford shuttled between Vetrovec and her friends and the Millers and theirs, giving both groups a chance, he said, “to vent.” Both camps seemed to calm down, at least temporarily.

But Vetrovec said she plans to press charges of child abuse against the neighbor girl who she claims burned her daughter. She said her husband, Jim, talked her out of seeking charges when the alleged incident occurred, and she became so angry at him that they have separated.

She said that she did not see the racial slurs on her friend Dunn’s house until she arrived home from the hospital Friday.

“I couldn’t even speak when I saw it,” she said. “Mary Jane came out to meet me. I kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry I brought this grief to the neighborhood.’ I don’t understand hatred and bigotry because I don’t live by it.”

“My nerves are eating me alive.”

More coverage of the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys appears today on B8.