After Facing Firing Squad, He’s Not Daunted by Much

Hollywood doesn’t scare Alberto Pino--not the druggies, not the streetwalkers, not the local street gangs and not the clogged traffic and dirt from the Metro Rail subway project.

He’s not even fazed by the fact that his new restaurant on Cahuenga Boulevard is largely empty these days for lunch and dinner.

“I’m an optimist and I’m going to make it in Hollywood,” the determined Pino said the other day. “I will.”

Struggling to make it in the tattered movie capital is nothing when you consider what Pino has already been through. Compared to facing a firing squad, the challenge of turning Rusty’s Hacienda Mexican Restaurant into a success is no big thing.

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The 50-year-old Pino encountered the firing squad in his native Cuba back in September of 1962--in the early days of Fidel Castro’s regime. Pino and his two brothers, Armando and Aurelio, were rounded up for questioning by government officials.

Pino said his arrest came some days after Aurelio, a banker, was detained for suspected opposition to the government. One morning, Pino was brought before a firing squad, he said, with his back to a deep trench, to sign a statement of loyalty to the Communist government.

He was told to sign or be shot, but the defiant Pino, who was 18 at the time, refused.

Members of the execution squad loaded blanks into their weapons and fired at him. He didn’t flinch. And he didn’t relent when he was told real bullets would be used.

“He didn’t care,” a friend recalled. “He’s fearless.”

Rebuffed by Pino, authorities tried the same tactic with Armando. They pointed to some blood in the trench, telling him it belonged to Pino.

The brother, however, didn’t believe them and didn’t sign either.

Afterward, the three brothers, who were physically unharmed but separated during their detention, were released by Cuban authorities and they, with their families, left for the United States.

Pino eventually made his way to the San Francisco Bay Area, landing a job as a dishwasher for $1.19 an hour. He learned English, studied the restaurant business and worked his way up the ladder. He had managed several restaurants by the early 1970s, among them a pricey establishment at the Berkeley marina.

In 1975, he was the owner of a French restaurant in Lafayette. He moved to Southern California several years later, buying Rusty’s Hacienda, a neighborhood eatery in the shadow of the Sears Roebuck store on Olympic Boulevard--a longtime fixture in Boyle Heights.

Pino opened a second Rusty’s in North Hollywood, but the Eastside business--with modest lunch traffic but roaring night-life receipts--required his close attention. The city wanted the restaurant’s location for a much-needed low-income housing project of 75 units.

Agreeing to be moved, Pino concluded, “The community needs this housing project.”

He set out to find a new location, but few pleased him. Then, earlier this year, he heard of a vacant earthquake-damaged building in Hollywood that once housed Gorky’s, a trendy restaurant and brewery that went out of business more than two years ago.

He loved the place, but officials with the Community Redevelopment Agency, who were helping Pino find a new spot, shook their heads in disbelief. “You’re crazy,” they told him.

But he was serious, so much so that he poured in more than $200,000 of his own money to help renovate the 100,000-square-foot building in the 1700 block of Cahuenga. He also kept 18 of his Eastside employees on the payroll after the restaurant was closed in March, waiting for the day last week when the new Rusty’s opened.

The CRA was impressed, too, and approved more than $525,000 to help with the relocation.

There were roadblocks along the way--obtaining a liquor license, dealing with haughty local gangs and figuring out the menu--but Pino was undaunted. He has been passing out free samples of salsa and chips to Hollywood merchants, offering two-for-one prices for meals and making contact with local Latino community groups.

“I’m not afraid of Hollywood or a few mocosos and what they might do,” he said, using Spanish slang to describe troublemakers. “Maybe one day the mocosos will go to work for me.”

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The other day, between greeting each new customer and hustling some banquet business, Pino admitted he still thinks about Cuba.

“When things change there, I may go for a visit,” he said. “But this is my country now. And I have a lot of work to do . . . here in Hollywood.”