BOYLE HEIGHTS : Life in a New Key for Latin Singers

Probation Officer Rudy Gutierrez took a wildly varied group of Roosevelt High School students--including a former gang member and a future nun--and formed a band to help remind them of their common Latino heritage.

The Latin Singers, as they came to be called, was established as an outlet for Roosevelt students “to sing in Spanish, to sing something they are proud of,” said Gutierrez.

But for its 19 members, the group has become a second home, a place where they can escape gang, school and family problems.

“If I wasn’t in this group, I wouldn’t be coming to school,” said Veronica Robles, 18, the band’s showcase singer. She said the group has helped her deal with family problems and has made a difference in her life. “In this band, I can sing my problems out.”

Gutierrez formed the group last year when he talked three seniors who were on probation into joining. “I told them: Either band or (Juvenile) Hall,” he said.

“One of the girls told me, ‘If I didn’t have this band I would probably be in a gang,’ ” Gutierrez said. “It’s important to me, knowing that I’ve made a difference in the lives of some of these kids.”

Alex Reyes, 16, said he was a gang member when he joined the band as a singer and guitarist. He said the group helped him turn his life in a new direction. “I’ve realized that the people in the band care a lot more about me than (gang members) do,” he said. “There’s no other group like this one.”

Guitarist Anthony Zuniga, 15, said he hopes the band serves as a model to other Roosevelt students: “There’s a lot of cholos who have musical talent. They should do something like this.”

And for Cookie Manzo, 17, who plans to join a convent in Ensenada, Mexico, after she graduates, the band is a final opportunity to sing and dance to secular music.

The band is providing its members with a musical education that Roosevelt didn’t offer when Gutierrez was a student at the school (class of 1964). “We never did any songs about our heritage when I was here,” he said. “The school was Latino back then, as it’s always been (since), but the teachers were not, and it showed in the curriculum. We never sang anything Spanish.”

Although there are extracurricular salsa, mariachi and Latin jazz bands at Roosevelt, the group’s eclectic repertoire of cumbias, boleros, rancheras and Mexican American oldies, all in two-part harmony, attracts listeners.

The group practices three or four days a week after school, sometimes until midnight before performances at community meetings and events. Although the group practices at Roosevelt, it is not funded by the school or any outside institution. “I would like to take them on a tour,” Gutierrez said, “but we don’t have the money.”

Still, the band has given its members something money can’t buy: a chance to see that a better life is possible for those who stay out of trouble and study hard, Gutierrez said.

Most of the students had previously never met a political figure or attended a formal dinner. Now their listeners have included Mayor Richard Riordan, the Cal State Los Angeles Chicano Studies Department, teen-agers in Downtown’s Central Juvenile Hall, and children at County-USC Medical Center who are battling cancer.

And their audiences have been just as impressed.

“When I heard them sing their first song, I was blown away,” Councilman Richard Alatorre said.