‘You Never Forget’ : El Sereno: Relatives decorate a tree with the names of 32 lost to violence by gangs and others.

Ever since her son was shot and killed 11 years ago this month, Marina R. Martinez has not put up a Christmas tree or colorful lights in her El Sereno home because she cannot reconcile the cheery season with her son Ismael’s death.

Instead, Martinez, 73, helps El Sereno remember those who have been murdered, many of them by gangs, by decorating a 25-foot-tall pine in the median of Huntington Drive with red velvet bows that bear the names of 32 people slain in the area over the years.

Ismael Martinez was 32 and the father of two young sons when he was caught in gang cross-fire as he went out to get a pizza for the kids. He was one of many remembered Saturday night with a mass, a posada and a candlelight vigil.

“You never forget,” said Martinez, whose red lipstick matched the festive red pantsuit she wore with a small Christmas wreath pin.

“I know he’s in a better place, but my house is dark during Christmas.”

Other bows on the tree bear the names of more recent shooting victims, among them Michael Zepeda, 18, shot and killed Wednesday as he walked down Huntington Drive South; and high school student Yolanda Navarro, 18, and her college-student boyfriend, Roberto Rodriguez, 19. The couple were followed home from a Halloween party in Highland Park in October and shot execution-style near their homes. Police suspect gang members in both attacks but have made no arrests.

“This is a very difficult evening for many, but also it’s a very beautiful evening to light the tree, a symbol of hope and the beginning of Christmas,” said Councilman Richard Alatorre at the vigil before he turned on the lights. “Maybe we can begin to make a difference in this senseless violence in our streets.”

Although the pain of her loss will never go away, Martinez has become a crusader for making the area safer for children and for turning gang members around.

She worked with other parents to institute a dress code at El Sereno Junior High School, and she chairs the nonprofit El Sereno Youth Development Corp., which for years has worked to find and fund a gang-neutral site for recreation and sports.

Last year, the group opened a temporary site, offering karate classes, soccer, basketball and baseball teams and computers. “If we can keep them busy doing something we can keep them out of trouble,” Martinez said.

At the junior high school, navy-blue pants and white shirts for boys and skirts and white blouses for girls have taken the place of baggy pants and shirts.

“The cholitos that we had before are wearing the uniforms and they look different, and the teachers say they can start educating them,” said Regina Vega, mother of a student there. “The environment in the school is so different.”

Of all her efforts, Martinez said, the most difficult is as head of Victims of Crime in El Sereno, whose members know the grief of losing a child to violence. They visit families, hold carwashes and sell Mexican dinners to raise money, sometimes coming up with just enough to buy a bouquet of flowers for the funeral.

The public spares little sympathy for victims involved in gangs or drugs, but that does not matter to Martinez. “Sometimes when I’m walking up (to their homes) I feel funny. I don’t know what to say to them. It happened to me, I understand how they feel, but it’s very hard.”

One mother whose son was killed in 1991 finds services for gangs distasteful and unjust. In a way, Virginia Escobedo says, gangs are benefiting from their misbehavior.

“I don’t know what to do with the gangs,” she said. “I just wish they didn’t exist. The only way they survive is by destroying lives.”

In the past, parents of victims would attend the Mass and bring photos of their loved ones, but that became too difficult, so the annual event has taken on a cheerier note.