Families in Suburbs Suffer Corrosive Fear of Violence

Sarah Lloyd is worried about her son. Sitting inside her car on a tree-shaded street on Monday, waiting to pick him up from the St. Mills Elementary School, her eyes widened with concern as she talked about 14-year-old Michael.

The boy is in no trouble with the law or with his teachers. Hardly.

Rather, he’s a straight-A student who has lately been worried sick over the safety and well-being of other kids his age--young boys and girls who fool themselves into thinking that suburban streets mean safety.

His fears are well-grounded. Recent weeks have brought published warnings about the presence of a man who has molested schoolchildren in this moneyed region of the San Fernando Valley.

And on Sunday, police arrested a 22-year-old neighbor on suspicion of murdering 8-year-old Nicole Parker, who disappeared from a Woodland Hills apartment complex this weekend and was found dead on Sunday.

Over the autumn weekend, Michael Lloyd had been keeping an eye on the case of the missing schoolgirl. After all, he lived just a few blocks from where she was last seen. And people had come to his door with flyers asking about her whereabouts.

Late Sunday, he called his mom into his bedroom to point to the television news: A man had been arrested in the case.

“He was worried sick about that girl,” Sarah Lloyd said. “I told him to try and get some sleep. I told him to say a prayer for that girl and that when we woke up in the morning that maybe there would be good news.

“But even as I was saying these things, I feared the worst. I know how these horrible stories usually end up.”

Sure enough, when Michael awoke on Monday, his mother was waiting with the news he feared most: “I told him ‘Michael, she’s dead.’ He just sort of stood there and didn’t say anything. I knew he was devastated. And so I just gave him the newspaper and let him read for himself.”

In Woodland Hills and other Valley neighborhoods, parents of small children and young teen-agers are coming face-to-face with a grim reality of life in the suburban Big City: Nice houses and expensive cars aren’t any protection from the insanity of violent crime.

They know that even though they don’t live in the city’s most dangerous areas, the murder and molestation of their own children are taking place right alongside their well-trimmed shrubs and manicured lawns.

And it’s not just parents who are worried. Kids are concerned, too.

“Michael is the kind of child who hates to hear about bad things happening to other children,” said Irish-born Sarah Lloyd. “He thinks it reflects badly on his country. He knows there is violence out there, but now it’s coming into his neighborhood. It’s hitting too close to home. And it scares him.”

The day after Nicole Parker’s body was found, a strange chill entered the air around the girl’s neighborhood. At St. Mills Elementary School, it was a classic suburban scene, where little girls in green-and-white-checked uniforms giggled as their little boy classmates raced across the street without the aid of a crossing guard.

Fathers whistled for sons. Moms called out. So far, so good. But underneath the surface, people were worried.

“I’m a grandparent, and I am frankly scared to death,” said Martha Hebblethwaite. “See that tree over there? I let my 7-year-old grandson climb that by himself, but whatever else he does outside the house, I’m right there with him. . . . You have to be insane not to be, with all this craziness happening.”

Dressed in his orange jumpsuit, James Miletti spends his days making sure that students cross busy Serrania Avenue safely. Recent weeks, he says, have brought a change to the daily scene of parents picking up their children.

“Everyday, there’s more and more mothers out here to meet their kids personally,” he said. “You don’t see the stray kid running home alone, unescorted. Everybody’s got a bodyguard these days.”

The big-city precautions haven’t stopped at home. At Woodland Hills Elementary School, students must have a buddy when walking outside the classroom and to the bathroom.

“We talk safety every day of the week around here,” said Woodland Hills Principal Bonnie Bishop-Moren. “School is a place where you learn. And our kids are definitely learning about safety.”

Bishop-Moren said that kids are aware of the violence closing in around them. It’s there every time they turn on the television.

“Kids see this stuff on TV just like we do. It sinks in with them. I think it’s a scary prospect to be a kid in Los Angeles these days,” she said.

But many parents and teachers know that it’s not enough to tell their children not to accept candy from strangers. In this day and age, people they know are just as dangerous to their safety.

“It’s not just strangers who are threats these days,” said Carol Bonelli, a first-grade teacher at Serrania Avenue Elementary School, who is friends with the parents of Nicole Parker. “It’s people you know--not that you know them very well, but people you see every day on the street. . . . This could be a real lesson for a lot of parents.”

Sarah Lloyd already knows that safety begins at home. Long before the recent rash of crimes against children in the Valley, she had coached her son Michael on the value of being suspicious when it comes to strangers.

She told him to be aware of who and what was around him, no matter what time of day. She warned him against talking with strangers--from the mailman to the next-door neighbor.

Her expressed concerns, she says, have made her think more closely about her relationship with her son. She wants Michael to know that it’s not him she distrusts.

It’s other people.

“I try to explain to him why I don’t want him wandering the (Ventura) boulevard all by himself,” she said. “I don’t want him to think that I’m just a scared old mother trying to be over-protective of him, trying to hold onto him longer than I should. I want him to know--it’s important for him to know--that I watch over him because I’m just concerned for his safety.

“And because I love him.”