Cause for Celebration : With Gang Truce Holding, Life in El Modena Area Is More Livable

Mauro Barron, 12, gazed at friends playing volleyball at the community center here Saturday and said he no longer feels any pressure to join one of the neighborhood gangs.

“They let you mind your own business now,” said Barron, accompanied by his 4-year-old brother, Gregory. “My dad says we have to come inside when it gets dark, because he thinks it’s not safe at night. But it’s much better now. There used to be a lot of drive-by shootings.”

“Now they tell you to keep it up at school, to pursue your dreams,” Barron said of the area’s Pearl Street and Varrio Modena Locos gangs. “I like to come here to play basketball and street hockey.”

Barron was one of about 100 teen-agers and young adults, many with arrest records, who came to the El Modena Community Center on Saturday afternoon partly to celebrate the gang truce that has calmed this neighborhood since last June.

Steaks donated by local markets sizzled on the barbecue. Young men pumped iron and shot pool in the center’s recreation room as rap music blared from a stereo.

“I think the truce has been working out pretty good,” said a 16-year-old who asked that he be referred to only as TJ. He said he was arrested for possessing and carrying a gun last year and is now on probation. “The center helped me get a job. I worked as a janitor, picking up the trash. . . . Now I work at McDonald’s. And I bought a car--a 1982 Pontiac Grand Prix.”

Although TJ retains his gang affiliation, he’s a role model for the other teen-agers, said Bob Pusavat, Orange County’s director of housing and community development. “A lot of kids look up to him,” he said. “TJ has a good job. He may own his own business someday. This is a solution.”

“The message is that we can get along,” Pusavat said. “We don’t have to kill each other. You don’t have to resort to violence to settle something.”

Since June, rival gangs have been meeting here once a month to talk out their differences instead of settling them on the street. It doesn’t necessarily end hostilities, but there have been fewer shootings in the unincorporated, sheriff’s-patrolled neighborhood near the city of Orange, authorities said.

The center attempts to keep everyone busy with activities ranging from trips to Big Bear Lake and Magic Mountain to boxing matches and job counseling.

Once feared in the community as a tough gang leader during his youth, John Esquivel now volunteers many hours each week at the center as an adult. Esquivel, whose nickname is “Bogart,” agreed that the truce that began months ago seems to be holding.

“They just want to feel wanted by somebody,” Esquivel said of the local teens.

John Marques, a county employee who helps staff the center, ran upstairs, opened a drawer in an old, donated wooden desk, and pulled out a red bandanna. “You see this?” said Marques. “Once we wore these to fit in. . . . You don’t see them anymore. For months, nobody’s worn them.”

Outside, watching a dozen girls play volleyball, a 20-year-old man who requested anonymity said he is still worried about being hassled by the cops. But he feels better about the community now, and has invited a friend, Efrain Leanos, 21, from Garden Grove, to the barbecue.

“The word is getting out that this is the place to come because it’s neutral turf,” said Leanos, sporting an Oakland A’s baseball cap.

“I feel a lot safer now,” added Yvette Sepulveda, 17, one of about 30 girls who have become active at the center. “It’s the activities, like this barbecue,” she said. “It keeps everyone off the streets. There’s been a real change.”

Pusavat and other officials agreed. He said graffiti once covered the neighborhood but now show up only once in awhile. And violent crime, while not extinguished, is much rarer, according to sheriff’s deputies.

Marisa Alaniz, 17, said she found a couple of girls just hanging out in the neighborhood and took them into her house. “They were runaways,” Alaniz said. “I didn’t know who to talk to, but I came here and started talking about the problem, which involved parents with alcohol problems. The girls went home, but the parents came here for help.”

“They keep this place open until 9 at night, which really helps a lot,” Alaniz said. “As a result, more and more kids come here to kick back. And that’s much better than the way it was.”