Mother Tries to Prevent Graffiti Spree : Tagging: Police call her a hero for warning them of Long Beach vandalism wave. ‘I couldn’t just let this happen,’ she says. Tip led to her son’s arrest.

Cruising Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach on Sunday night, there were two things on the mother’s mind: finding her teen-age son and stopping a graffiti spree.

Most of the night she drove, noting the fresh blooms of spray paint appearing on walls, hoping against hope her son wasn’t involved. At last, desperate, she stopped several patrol cars and warned officers of the massive tagging her son’s buddies had been planning as part of an initiation into a tagging crew.

On Wednesday, the mother’s 16-year-old son was arrested in connection with the Sunday night graffiti wave that left nearly 500 “tags” of spray paint over 61 blocks of mostly commercial buildings on PCH. Her tip had also allowed them to arrest a second tagging suspect, catching him in the act, police said.

Officers are calling the 39-year-old single mother of four a hero. She isn’t so sure.

“I don’t feel heroic,” said the woman, who requested anonymity out of concern that the crew whose plans she helped thwart may retaliate against her or her son. “I feel scared.”

She simply had to do something, she explained.

“I wasn’t going to tolerate it, them vandalizing the city,” she said. “I couldn’t just let this happen.”

The mother has more worries than most heroes.

This week, she received an eviction notice that will force her family from their two-bedroom apartment. She wonders, for her own safety, whether she should move to another city.

In an interview, the mother said she learned of plans to tag PCH on Sunday evening, as she did laundry in her apartment building. She heard some other teen-agers talking about it--youths who had recently been hanging around her son.

She confronted her son and told him he was not allowed to go out with his friends that night. A little later, with her son’s friends watching, she broke up a fight between him and his 20-year-old brother. She now believes the older son was telling his brother that he could not be involved in tagging.

The 16-year-old ran off, apparently humiliated, she said. Sometime later, she went out searching for him. But first she stopped by the East Long Beach police station to report what she heard. And she stopped several patrol cars as she drove PCH, telling them to look out for taggers on the coast road.

“You have to admire her,” Officer Barry Fowks said. “She was trying to stop a felony from happening any which way she could.”

Police alerted law enforcement agencies to look for taggers on PCH. About midnight Sunday, security guards at Brooks College, on PCH near Anaheim Street, saw two teen-agers spray-painting a building, Fowks said.

Security guards arrested 19-year-old Brian Davis Charley, but the other suspected tagger slipped away.

The mother drove up as Charley was captured. The guards told her a boy got away. She asked them for a description and her heart sank as they gave one that sounded like her son. Still, she wasn’t convinced.

She was at work Wednesday when police arrested her son as he sat across the street from his house reading a newspaper story on his crew’s exploits.

The boy is being held in Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall on suspicion of felony vandalism and conspiracy, Fowks said. Charley, who faces similar charges, is being held in lieu of $50,000 bail.

Officers believe that Charley and the 16-year-old were being initiated by a crew Sunday night. Two adults drove the teen-agers around to different tagging locations, Fowks said. Sometime before the graffiti spree began, the crew members allegedly met to discuss their plans--making them, and possibly other crew members, vulnerable to a charge of felony conspiracy even if they never picked up a can of spray paint, Fowks added.

Police said the 16-year-old had been arrested once before on suspicion of graffiti vandalism and was due in court Wednesday for a hearing in that case.

“I thank God I didn’t see him that night, because then I would have to admit it (the police allegation that her son is a tagger) was true,” the mother said. “But if I did find them tagging, I would have called the police. I would have done it so the other boys knew it was me who told and not my son. I’m still afraid they might retaliate on him.”

The tagging spree, which lasted through Monday morning and caused $12,000 in damage, was the worst in nearly a year in Long Beach since two crews held a war last summer on the Long Beach Freeway causing $100,000 in damage, Fowks said.

Incidents of graffiti in Long Beach have been reduced about 90% over the last three years. Police, like those in some other communities, had begun to believe the graffiti fad was dying out.

“I still think graffiti is way down,” Fowks said. “It’s just when we have stuff like this happen that it seems bad all over again.”