Irwindale’s Family Values : The City’s Close-Knit Residents Have Carved Out a Bit of Paradise Amid the Rock Quarries--and They’re Keeping It to Themselves

Cities across the San Gabriel Valley gutted recreation programs last year and slapped taxes and fees on everything from utilities to dog tags. But Irwindale expanded its library hours and started tutoring kids for free.

Demographic change is sweeping through Southern California and rising crime tops a litany of modern Angst in suburbia. But Irwindale, a quarry-pocked working-class city of about 1,050, grew by only 20 people in the 1980s--and most of them were related to the families whose Mexican ancestors put down roots there at the turn of the century. There is no local gang; home burglaries tallied a modest eight last year; there were no rapes; and the city logged only two murders, neither of them involving residents.

Seven years after the city suffered a costly embarrassment in its failed bid to lure the Raiders, Irwindale finds it can hold its head higher than ever, especially compared with its neighbors. And in the case of its senior citizens, those heads are barbered or coiffed at city expense.

“We’re surrounded by big towns and corporations that want to eat us alive. People are envious of what we have. But we’ve built this place--with our hearts and souls,” said Dolores (Peaches) Barbosa, 37, who moved away from Irwindale for a decade before coming home to the comfort of family five years ago. “There’s poor people here and they’re in paradise.”

The national media mocked the city as naive after the sour Raiders deal emptied once-bulging coffers of more than $20 million; and as long ago as 1961, only four years after incorporation, a local press account snidely dubbed the city “a study in dust and dejection . . . as attractive as a goiter.”

But since the Raiders fiasco, the luster in better-groomed Southern California cities has faded in the face of increasing crime and a long-suffering economy. And Irwindale finds itself looking pretty good.

What other city offers all its residents medical prescriptions for $3, plus vision care and free trips for the kids to Disneyland? Students are driven to outlying school districts in city buses, and tuition for college is as easy as filling out a request and handing it over to the Chamber of Commerce. Senior citizens’ benefits kick in at the spry age of 50 and include free piano lessons and barbering. And the city will fork over a $5,000 grant to any homeowners who need to bring their houses up to code. And come Christmas, every child gets a stocking stuffed with goodies.

So how do you get in? It’s almost impossible.

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While for-sale signs dot front lawns in other cities, Irwindale residents recall seeing only two over the past three years. Nearby realtors don’t remember any. Even the most run-down cottages are coveted as tickets to privilege: When they are sold or rented out, more often than not they are passed on to relatives.

The median family income in 1989 was only $29,900, the third-lowest in the Valley, higher only than El Monte and South El Monte. But a dollar goes further in Irwindale. Garbage pickup is free, and residents are exempt from the steep 7.5% utility tax imposed on business.

At the Ortiz family home on the tiny cul-de-sac of Nora Avenue, a workman dabs finishing touches around a $5,000 window job that will finally keep the winter air from seeping through the cracks. The bill: to be paid by a city grant.

Around the corner at the city’s recreation center, Rebecca Ortiz, 16, and sister Laura, 12, pile into a city bus with dozens of other Irwindale youths for a trip to Disney on Ice in Anaheim. Tickets are free for kids and half price for teens. And just two days earlier, their mother, 39-year-old Cheryl Ortiz, picked out a new pair of eyeglass frames--billed to the vision plan the city offers all Irwindale residents.

If Barbosa’s sister, recreation supervisor Veronica Lara, didn’t use the city’s prescription plan, the $65 injections she needs to alleviate recurring migraines would cost her between $150 and $300 a month. She pays $3 per shot.

City trips are half price for adults as well as teen-agers. Last month, a busload headed for the Bette Midler concert at the Universal Amphitheatre. The $50 tickets cost residents $25. And three weeks earlier, $10 got Irwindale residents prime seats to watch the L.A. Rams play the Washington Redskins.

Laura Ortiz thanks the new tutoring program, staffed with credentialed teachers who pull in $22 an hour, for upping her science grade from a D to a B. Held at the old City Council chambers next to the library, the program is open to all of Irwindale’s school-age children.

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And at the $2.5-million senior center, residents enjoy everything from ceramics to knitting, and can get beauty and health instruction free of charge. Ladies get their hair done every Friday, and the men’s barber comes every two weeks.

To most of those who live there, Irwindale is family--intimate and inescapable--and more than the redevelopment cash and industrial tax base that fattened city coffers, residents credit bloodlines for their town’s stubborn survival.

“It’s control. We have control of our own city, our own development, and who comes in,” Barbosa said. “That’s really what we base our lives on--to keep that control--because all we have is ourselves.”

Although chronic political squabbling among the Irwindale families that have governed the city for decades drove Barbosa away, the constant specters of crime and homelessness in San Jose, and the lure of her own deep Irwindale roots, brought her home to the little town she both loves and hates.

Most families, including those who have dominated the five-member City Council for decades--Barbosa, Miranda, Breceda and Diaz among them--have claimed Irwindale as home since at least the beginning of this century.

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Barbosa’s grandparents settled here during the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th Century. Her grandmother harvested citrus and walnuts in what was once a sea of orchards surrounding the dusty town. Her grandfather helped build the historic Presbyterian church on Irwindale Avenue with wheelbarrows full of rocks hauled from the San Gabriel River bed.

For 27 years, Barbosa’s mother served as city clerk and treasurer, and her father served on the council. Now her brother, Councilman Frederick S. Barbosa, is taking his turn.

But Irwindale’s roots go even deeper. Many residents trace their lineage to Gregorio Fraijo, one of the region’s earliest Mexican settlers, and his wife, Francisca.

According to the research of James Vasquez, a University of Washington professor and Fraijo descendant who is documenting the family history, Gregorio Fraijo came to the Los Angeles area around 1848 from Sonora, Mexico, and in 1871 purchased a piece of Rancho Azusa from English-born merchant Henry Dalton. That land now constitutes the residential hub of Irwindale--dubbed “Sonoraville” at one time.

“There are thousands of descendants in the area,” said Vasquez, who attends a Fraijo reunion in Irwindale every year. Last summer, 500 descendants gathered there and cast a heavy bronze plaque dedicated to Gregorio and Francisca Fraijo that will be mounted in City Hall.

The community forged by these families made history. After incorporation, local press accounts pointed to the Irwindale City Council as the only all-Latino council in the country. And the little rock church that still stands on Irwindale Avenue is the first Presbyterian church in California--possibly the nation--where Spanish is the primary language.

Irwindale, 86% Latino according to the 1990 U.S. Census, was a haven in a sea of hostility and demeaning glances.

“Covina looked down on everybody here. Oh, the prejudice was so strong,” said 61-year-old Mary Duarte, an Irwindale native whose maiden name is Diaz.

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Nellie Tapia, 68, whose grandmother was a Fraijo, recalls how neighboring cities jeered when the fledgling Irwindale Police Department became the first of the region’s cities to get radar.

Irwindale closed ranks. Resident Carmen Gomez, 73, who as a child purchased water for five cents a bucket from the Fraijos, remembers years when whites and African-Americans began moving in. Most left, she recalled, because some long-timers “beat the hell out of them. They didn’t want any other race here--only Mexicans.”

Now, residents cling to the stability the community offers.

Lara married a man who grew up two blocks behind her. She now lives in one of 44 subsidized houses the city doled out by lottery to Irwindale residents or their relatives in 1988. She is surrounded on her block by the same people she played with as a child. Many of those three-bedroom houses were sold for only $55,000, complete with microwave ovens and garage-door openers.

Brenda Marin’s grandfather came to Irwindale with his parents in 1900, when he was 3 years old, and eventually married a Fraijo, served on the first City Council and came to be known as “Mr. Irwindale.” Marin’s great-grandmother’s house still stands intact with the pomegranate tree she planted there. Five generations of Marin’s family have called the house home.

Today, she lives eight houses from where her grandparents lived for 62 years. The stability and the benefits have not been lost on her children, aged 12 and 15.

“They fight over who gets the house when I die,” Marin said laughing.

To an outsider’s casual glance, Irwindale looks like it isn’t worth fighting over: The city’s nine-square-mile area is scarred by sand and gravel pits and dotted with industry. Houses line only about a dozen streets, most of them tiny cul-de-sacs within walking distance of City Hall, the park and recreation center. Many are decades-old run-down bungalows on land still zoned for farm animals. Their tiny yards are crammed with old cars and littered with children’s toys.

From the ties that link these city blocks by blood or marriage comes Irwindale’s credo of privilege, responsible for a wealth of small luxuries even at a time when most cities are grappling with fiscal crises.

“We really take care of our own. That’s what Irwindale’s all about,” said Julian A. Miranda, 24, whose uncle, Councilman Patricio Miranda, served on the city’s first Planning Commission and has sat on the council for decades. Another uncle sat on the council for years, and Julian’s father, Julian S. Miranda, is the Irwindale police chief.

Non-residents, however, can enjoy some services: the tennis courts, the well-maintained park, the gym and the swimming pool, although they pay slightly more than residents do for use of the pool.

But other programs, including the gym’s tiny weight room, are for residents only, as are trips and other programs paid for with city money. Outsiders have tried to cash in on Irwindale’s riches, but in a town this small, it’s hard to convince people you’re a resident when they’ve never seen your face before.

While the city’s wealth skyrocketed after it formed its redevelopment agency in 1976, Irwindale has long drawn on a hefty industrial tax base from a once-thriving sand and gravel industry, and resident perks are nothing new. As early as 1960, the local press was leering at Irwindale’s just-completed recreation center, chiding its lavishness as “a veritable Taj Mahal.” And yellowed newspaper photos show a smiling group of residents about to board a city bus with their fishing rods for a complimentary city field trip more than 30 years ago.

Things only got better. The city incorporated with few more than 600 residents--a number that has not even doubled in more than 36 years. The recreation department budget, however, has exploded, from about $5,000 in 1958-59, to $80,000 in 1960-61. The adopted recreation budget for 1993-94: $583,000.

Not that Irwindale is immune from the economic woes plaguing most other cities.

The rock industry is not providing much sand and gravel to a depressed construction industry, and mining tax revenue is down, said City Manager David A. Caretto. So are sales tax revenues and business licenses.

The Chamber of Commerce college scholarship fund, combined with another private fund started by former redevelopment consultant Fred Lyte, has for years doled out tuition and book money to any Irwindale resident with a C average or better. One woman got $40,000 to go to law school. But the chamber’s fund has dwindled to $22,000. Depressed local businesses just aren’t contributing, said chamber executive director Joe DiShanni. Over the past year, 38 businesses packed up and left Irwindale, many of them for other states, he added.

By 1987, city and redevelopment coffers had swelled to $35 million. Now, those reserves total about $8 million, said Irwindale Finance Director Abraham De Dios. This is about the same as the city’s budget this year. General fund revenues are down $300,000 this year from 1992-93, Caretto added.

While library hours expanded in July, a Police Department position and park maintenance position remain unfilled, Caretto said.

“It’s not as if we haven’t tried to control or limit expenditures. But because of the small size of the population, we have been able to provide services that other cities just could never afford to provide,” he said.

Newcomers--and there are few--are grateful for the services they would never receive elsewhere, but some complain that they can never feel as much a part of the city as those who have claimed it for generations.

Although the Ortizes have relatives in Irwindale, they have lived there for only three years, having purchased the house from friends.

“There’s too many people that talk. On the street, you turn your back and they’re there, talking about you,” complained Teresa Ortiz, 12, Laura’s twin.

Longtime residents concede the community can be painfully resistant to change, with some residents even opposing plans for 36 new subsidized low- and moderate-income houses. While the houses will almost certainly go to Irwindale residents and their families, as did the last batch, even that type of expansion could upset the fine balance of power in a town with only 659 registered voters.

Come election time, the same predictable accusations of voting fraud fly: that families bring in nieces and nephews, who had long ago moved away, to cast their votes; that certain families are out to line their own pockets and find city jobs for their relatives. Brenda Marin remembers the time when her aunt tried to run over a councilman who had launched a recall drive against her grandfather--one of many such campaigns to shake the city in its early years.

“Here, one vote means everything. Because here people win or lose by one vote,” said Peaches Barbosa. “It’s an injustice, but people will lie to the ground. . . . ‘Yes, so-and-so has been living here,’ when you know damn well they’ve moved away.”

And blood as much as substance often determines the way those votes are cast, with people committing their votes because “someone did their father a favor 45 years ago,” Barbosa said.

In the decades since incorporation, the same issues keep emerging with a virulent ferocity: Now, as in 1960 and again in the 1970s, Irwindale families are sounding a battle cry against a developer’s plans to bring in a card club.

The family feuds go back for generations. Even two Fraijo branches--descendants of Gregorio’s son, Pablo, and descendants of his son, Bernardo--have held separate reunions for years, although last summer they all came together, Vasquez said.

Privacy is hard to come by.

“This is the kind of place where you go to the post office in your jammies,” Marin said. “But everything has its down side. You have a fight with your husband and everybody knows about it.”

When 24-year-old Julian Miranda won a council seat two years ago, he hoped residents would see in him a refreshing perspective. Many, he complains, see just another Miranda. Now, even Julian is toying with the idea of “taking off,” maybe for Oregon or points beyond, although he said he would definitely come home to Irwindale to raise a family.

Even in the heat of a decades-old conflict, however, most Irwindale residents unite in times of tragedy.

Several years ago, Marin sued Councilman Pat Miranda for conflict of interest in a scandal that led to the firing of redevelopment consultant Lyte. The lawsuit drove an even deeper wedge between two families that have long sparred in the political arena.

But in the heat of the lawsuit, which was eventually resolved in an out-of-court settlement, a member of the Miranda family died in an accident.

Neither Marin nor the Mirandas were surprised by what happened next. There she was, helping out after the funeral, side by side with the family she would face in court the very next day.

Irwindale at a Glance

Incorporated: 1957

Combined Reserves in 1987: $35 million Today: $8 million

Number of businesses: 520

Number of people employed: 28,000

Number of residents 1970: 784 1980: 1,030 1990: 1,050

Ethnicity 1990: 85.6% Latino, 12% white, 2% Asian, 0.1% African American (1 person).

Registered voters 1961: 305 1993: 659

Recreation Department budget 1958-59: $5,000 1960-61: $80,000 1993-94: $583,000

Redevelopment agency’s holdings 1986-87: $43.2 million 1987-88: $29.8 million 1991-92: $47.9 million

Source: U.S. Census, City of Irwindale