PACOIMA : Mortician Will Try to Revive Business District

Where did Pacoima merchants turn to bring their ailing business district back to life?

Why, to the local mortician, of course.

It’s no joke that the more than 200 members of the Pacoima Chamber of Commerce believe that new President Joel Rucker, a local mortician, is the man to bring living, breathing, spending customers back to their markets and other businesses.

“People have stereotyped morticians as men who are stoic and not associated with community activities,” said Beatrice Hines, the chamber’s office manager. “But far be it as far as this man is concerned.”

Rucker, a widowed father, retired from his job as a science teacher at San Fernando High School in 1984 to take over the family business, Rucker’s Mortuary in Pacoima. He’s helped out at the mortuary since he was 8 years old.

Rucker took the two-year mantle as chamber president, he said, because he wanted to prove that Pacoima was a safe place in which to live and do business--something he said only a mortician would really know.

“Despite the stereotypes, we don’t have as many deaths to violent causes as they do in other parts of the Valley,” said Rucker, 55, a resident of Lake View Terrace. “We need to change that image.”

To make that change, Rucker will leave his hearse at the shop and seek out merchants to work with police in a new business watch. He also will focus on redeveloping blighted areas by championing a proposed federal empowerment zone, which could allow businesses and residents in a portion of Pacoima to use part of $100 million in tax breaks and other aid.

The city and county of Los Angeles will propose the empowerment zone to the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which will not make a decision before September. For merchants who say these measures are not expedient enough to solve Pacoima’s image problem and return customers to their shops, Rucker will call on his experience to soothe them.

“You learn how to be patient,” he said.