SOUTHBAY / COVER STORY : Worst of the Worst : Amid the debris of Far East Wilmington, the down-and-out deal drugs, sell their bodies and strip cars. This ‘Third World’ may be the most run-down section of Los Angeles.

The skinny woman looks like a zombie. She walks aimlessly along a dirt street where businesses vie for space with towering piles of debris. Her dirty blonde hair is coarse and unkempt. Black rings surround her sunken eye sockets.

At 21, her body is infested with hepatitis B and AIDS. The woman is a prostitute, active along with 20 to 30 others in this part of East Wilmington, a huge but hidden junkyard--literally and figuratively--that is part of Los Angeles. Residents in the wider port community call it the Third World.

The area attracts not only prostitution but a lively drug trade, illegal dumping and car stripping operations.

Amid all this, David Stoll, owner of Stoll Engine Co. on East Anaheim Street, is trying to keep his maritime business alive. The store has been in his family since the 1930s, but Stoll expects to relocate to Irvine next year.

“My customers have been propositioned by prostitutes. Then there’s the drug dealers,” he said. “I have fights outside my store. I have bullet holes in my windows on a continuing basis.”

Hundreds of down-and-out people have flocked to Wilmington’s Third World over the years as legitimate business owners such as Stoll have struggled to get the blight and illegal activities eliminated.

The area has had three Los Angeles City Council representatives in the past 40 years, but none has successfully motivated the myriad of government agencies and authorities who have responsibility in the area. Today the Third World--also known as Far East Wilmington--is arguably the most run-down section of Los Angeles.

From the Terminal Island Freeway, the 100-acre area is a sea of abandoned car bodies, tires, metal scraps, furniture and other dumped debris that the homeless survive on. Only one of the city streets is paved. Dozens of junk piles, which can grow several feet a day, make several streets impassable.

Up to 300 businesses, most of which are auto dismantlers, operate amid the decay. Many have no electricity or running water. The area has no sewage system, only a series of cesspools.

The Third World is bordered by the Dominguez Channel and Grant and Anaheim streets; on its fourth side, an unnamed exit off the Terminal Island Freeway spits those who want to go there, or those who don’t know better, into a bustling center at Foote Avenue. Sometimes, crack-dealing at Foote Avenue and the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks is so blatant that the area resembles a small marketplace.

Many of the addicts make money “skinning,” slicing the plastic coating from stolen industrial cables with a technique not unlike a Japanese chef preparing live eel. The copper treasure inside fetches up to 95 cents a pound at the many recycling businesses in Wilmington.

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Next door to the Third World, towering dunes of canary-yellow sulfur sit atop property owned by the Port of Los Angeles. Windblown particles from the California Sulphur Co. operation fill the air, assault the nostrils and quickly leave a visible residue on car windows.

At Downtown’s Skid Row, a more-notorious district of drug activity, prostitution and homelessness, the conditions are better. At least there the city streets are paved, portable toilets have been installed and the city’s Public Works Department has started daily trash pickup, said LAPD Sgt. Chuck Mealey, who has worked on Skid Row since 1981.

In Far East Wilmington, longtime business owners blame the city and the Harbor Department, which owns about 20% of the property, for the poor conditions. They argue that authorities simply ignore the area and its problems, as they say has been true of all of Wilmington since it joined Los Angeles in 1909. Although government bodies such as the Community Redevelopment Agency are set up to assist run-down areas, no long-term improvement program has been initiated in the Third World.

“This would be an ideal place for urban renewal,” said Manuel Louis, who has operated the Louis Equipment marine supply company on Schley Street since 1947. He and Stoll established the Far East Wilmington Improvement Assn. six years ago.

“You have some of the most valuable ground in L.A., adjacent to the expansion of both the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, and we’re existing in the backwash.”

But CRA property manager Jeffrey Skorneck said: “We found that when we looked at that area, (a renewal plan) wasn’t going to be financially feasible.”

In 1990, port officials said they would like to own Far East Wilmington for future harbor business. In the meantime, they objected to the idea of spending millions of dollars to improve the streets, which are pocked with holes that become impassable ponds when it rains.

Stoll was so exasperated that he sued the city and the port in 1991, accusing them of deliberately neglecting the Third World to drive down property values so they could acquire the land cheaply for development.

City and port officials deny Stoll’s allegations. Although the port has acquired several properties in the area since 1985, acquisitions have slowed in recent years and the port has no plan for the area, said Mike Lemke, the port’s director of property management. “We have no evil intent,” he said.

In his suit, Stoll sought $6 million in damages. No damages were paid, but the city and port agreed to purchase Stoll’s property and building for $680,000. The settlement was finalized in December.

Stoll said he was pleased to settle. “I don’t know who else would buy my property, at any price,” he said.

Authorities from city, county and state government agencies are familiar with the area, but say they are understaffed and need a coordinated approach to tackling the Third World.

Many city authorities, such as the Street Use Inspection division in the Public Works Department, respond primarily to complaints. The division only has one inspector for the region stretching from San Pedro to Watts, said Chief Inspector Jim Washington.

The division has not issued a single citation for illegal dumping in the streets of Far East Wilmington, Washington said. Authorities say it is difficult to catch the people who come in and dump at night, and no single agency is in charge of removing the mess.

Frank C. Cardenaf, who was appointed to the city’s Public Works Commission last month, is one of several officials who have visited Far East Wilmington recently, some for the first time.

“I was amazed at the conditions,” Cardenaf said. “We should not have pockets like this in this city.”

Vito Scattaglia, district commander of the Department of Motor Vehicles’ Bureau of Investigations, has been there twice since his area of command was restructured to include Wilmington last year. The department controls car dismantling businesses in the state.

“When I first went down there and looked at what I’d inherited, I just about died. It’s unbelievable,” Scattaglia said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us. It’s a disaster down there.”

The DMV licenses 123 auto dismantlers in all of Wilmington and San Pedro, but many more illegal dismantlers operate in the Third World, he said. Police and business people who know the area estimate about 200 dismantlers have probably set up shop.

Scattaglia said enforcement is a nightmare. Any time that the DMV comes in to inspect permits, word gets out and the illegal businesses close for the day.

“The people there are too well established. They have their own network,” he said.

The DMV has neglected the Third World in the past, Scattaglia said, but he is organizing a major investigation of the area. It will start early next year, when more inspectors have been appointed to his bureau. “We will investigate, arrest and prosecute. We will take them on,” he said.

Far East Wilmington also is known to the BADCATS division of the LAPD, which investigates organized auto theft rings.

Detective Bill Lovold said the Far East Wilmington car yards are more concentrated than those found in the San Fernando Valley--another hot spot for auto thefts. “They seem to open up businesses (in the Third World) with or without the necessary permits at the drop of a hat,” he said.

The Port Police Department recovers about 100 vehicles that have been stripped in Far East Wilmington every year. “They bring the cars in here and strip them for parts, then dump them in Wilmington,” said Senior Lead Officer Michael Bland. “Then I find them the next day and have to impound them.”

For all the openness of illegal activity in the Third World, the Harbor Division of the LAPD, which has jurisdiction, is not as active in the area as it was a year or two ago, some business owners say.

Police respond that they cover the area as well as they can with the manpower they have.

“We’re there any time we can, when any officers working that area have the time,” said Harbor Division Lt. William R. Sweet when asked how frequently the police visit. “We don’t have the adequate personnel to give it as much attention as we would like.”

The division’s “junkyard detail,” which coordinates police activity in the area, was cut from four officers to one in 1991, Sweet said.

And people who loiter in the area say they can sense the arrival of police. On a recent afternoon near the railway tracks, several homeless people were skinning for metal. “Get back,” said Dave, one of the group. The crowd dispersed. Later, it turned out that the driver of an unmarked car parked several hundred yards in the distance was a police officer.

Over on Foote Avenue, two marked LAPD vehicles recently pulled up beside the railway line, where it isn’t uncommon for 15 to 20 crack users to hang out. The officers, their hands gloved in plastic, searched the clothing of three men and a woman, but found no trace of narcotics.

Even though the jurisdiction of the Port Police stops 500 yards from the edge of the harbor, they help patrol the Third World. Business owners and the homeless say Bland, the port police senior lead officer, has been a more familiar face than the LAPD officers since about 1988.

Louis tells the story of a trailer that was pushed to a spot near his business and used for prostitution. “I called Bland, and two hours later it was removed. There’s no other department that operates like that,” he said.

Bland believes that responsibility for improving the area rests squarely on the shoulders of city officials. He said he is fed up with the procrastination.

“A lot of this that they want to sit down and talk about, they don’t need to talk about,” he said. “They need to get in here and clean it up and have their building and business permit people come in and cite these people.”

If Far East Wilmington seems bad and ugly now, Bland said, it was much worse four years ago. With the help of legitimate auto dismantling companies, he impounded abandoned vehicles for 18 months straight, bringing in tow truck after tow truck to clear the streets under a plan initiated by former Mayor Tom Bradley. This was the only city attempt at a coordinated cleanup effort of the area in recent memory.

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Bland still drives through the Third World every day he is on duty, tracing the origin of an abandoned car or ordering employees to remove debris outside their businesses. “If I waited for the city to do it, I’d be waiting forever,” he said.

When Joan Milke Flores was councilwoman for the harbor district, her office suggested that Far East Wilmington be fenced to keep dumping, prostitution, drugs and thievery at bay. Business owners balked at the idea, saying the fence would discourage customers.

Now Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who has been known to record the location of a pothole or broken sign on a hand-held tape player while driving the streets of San Pedro, says he will take on Wilmington’s Third World.

It will cost an estimated $13 million for the sewage, storm drains and street paving needed in the area. Svorinich said the work could go forward if property owners agree to pay additional taxes to reimburse the city.

“It’s not the policy of the city to come in and invest resources,” he said. “Someone has to pay for them.”

Svorinich hopes to organize a task force of city agencies before the end of the year that will address issues affecting the area.

But Cardenaf, the new Public Works commissioner assigned to Svorinich’s district, said the dismal state of Far East Wilmington challenges any quick and simple remedy. “I don’t think there’s going to be an easy solution,” he said.

And Louis said he is skeptical of Svorinich’s plan. Although the area is located next door to one of the wealthiest harbors in the country, Louis said Wilmington residents simply lack the political clout to get officials hopping.

Louis expects that the area will become more run-down as city development plans for the Alameda Corridor and the Dominguez Channel bridge are implemented, disrupting business access to the area.

Like Stoll, some business owners are finding somewhere else to go. Up to the early 1980s, the area was dominated by boating-related businesses like his. Now there are only three.

“It’s not by choice,” Stoll said. “I’m third-generation in this business. I really had no intention of ever moving.”