Staying Power : Tightknit Simi Valley Residents Confront Gang Problem

Three bullet holes. Those tiny, ominous marks greet Yong Kim every morning at his used appliance store in Simi Valley.

Anyone coming in for a washer, dryer or refrigerator can see them, blasted into the California Street storefront.

It was kids, the police told Kim. They broke in during the night, fired a few shots and split.

But that was two years ago, before police cracked down on the wanna-be gangsters who called themselves Varrio Simi Valley.

Back then, the corner of California and 4th Street was their hangout, the stretch from 1st to 5th streets and down to Royal Avenue their turf.

For a while things got quiet. The gangs quit hanging out. A few troublemaking families moved away. And residents felt safe to sit on stoops and let their children ride bikes through the shaded streets of one of the oldest, most tightknit neighborhoods in town.

Then, on April 1, a boy--a known gang member--was shot in the heart and killed as he walked across the 1st Street Bridge. Another boy--the son of one of the neighborhood’s founding families and the member of a rival gang--turned himself in.

Retaliation followed. A 15-year-old boy was attacked with a baseball bat while he walked on 4th Street near Royal Avenue. Two other youths armed with a bat and a pipe told police they were out to even the score.

Residents and shop owners wonder what will happen next. Have they seen the worst their neighborhood can produce, or is there more to come?

If April’s shooting leads to more violence in the neighborhood, Kim said, he may be forced to close his shop.

“As long as there’s no problem, I will stay,” he said. “If things start getting bad, I will have no choice. I will leave.”

But Kim’s reaction runs counter to that of many longtime residents. They are determined to stick it out.

George Lemos lives with his wife and three young daughters on land that has been in his family for five generations.

“This is my neighborhood,” he said. “My neighborhood. I am not going anywhere.”

His great-grandfather first came from Mexico to Simi Valley in 1902 to work on the railroad. In 1942 he bought the lot at 4th Street and Ashland Avenue and built a home for his family.

Today Lemos kin reside throughout the neighborhood, along with a dozen other old-time families--Lopez, Delgado, Perez, Carillo, Banaga, Chavez among them.

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Evenings and weekends are filled with over-the-fence chats, block parties and impromptu ball games in the streets.

“If you have a party, everybody comes,” Lemos said. “It’s like we’re all one family.”

For Lemos and his wife Sandra, it is the natural place to raise their family, despite the violence of recent months.

“Yes, we do worry,” he said. “But you can’t live your life behind closed doors. Everyone in the neighborhood is angry about this. We don’t want a bad reputation. We want our neighborhood back.”

Police are doing their part to keep a lid on any trouble in the neighborhood, as they have for years. Patrols are frequent and gang surveillance common. Crime statistics show the area no more dangerous than many other parts of Simi Valley.

In 1994, there were 480 calls for police assistance in the neighborhood, about average for the city. And the neighborhood was responsible for about 1.1% of the city’s serious crimes, including arson, rape, robbery, burglary, theft, auto theft, assault and homicide.

A recent gang sweep of a dozen Simi Valley homes included just one in the 4th Street neighborhood.

Sgt. Mike King said the unsavory reputation of the 4th Street area is unfounded.

“The perception that this is not a good area doesn’t pan out,” King said. “The gang members are spread all over the place. The average person may label someone hanging out in baggy pants as a gang member. Do you think that’s fair?”

Ernie Diaz, a construction worker and former member of Varrio Simi Valley, or V.S.V., said he is often mistaken by police as an active gang member.

He wears his pants baggy and his hair closely cropped. Two tiny silver hoops adorn each ear.

“The cops are here every day,” Diaz said. “They stop me. They ask me questions. They check me for weapons.”

But Diaz, 24, said he has sworn off the gang lifestyle. “That was a long time ago,” he said. “I was young and stupid.”

Some residents worry that there are still plenty of neighborhood teen-agers who find hanging out and picking fights appealing.

Rubin Banaga, whose family has lived in the area for decades, fears that the neighborhood troubles are going to get worse.

“It’s not over yet,” he said. “Wait till summer comes, when the kids have nothing to do but sit around and get mad.”

Concerns about gangs are a relatively new phenomenon in the 4th Street neighborhood, one of the oldest in Simi Valley. In 1888, when most of the valley was covered in grazing land and citrus orchards, a Chicago developer shipped in 12 prefabricated homes and called them Simiopolis.

Today one of those homes sits at the Strathearn Historical Park. The other sits at the corner of 2nd Street and Pacific Avenue, right where it was assembled more than a century ago.

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That two-story, wood frame house was the center of town, home to the post office, switchboard and Bessie Printz, whose name remains on the mail box.

Over the years the house deteriorated, and many children in the neighborhood believed it was haunted.

“When Bessie lived there it was kind of a spooky thing,” said Tom Powell, whose son Larry bought the house 10 years ago to restore it. “Bessie kept to herself. She was kind of a grouchy old woman.”

Work on the house has been slow. The long, narrow house leans slightly to the right. It has no foundation, instead propped up by a series of stumps. The front porch sags, and much of the detailed woodwork has fallen off or rotted away.

“I love old things,” Larry Powell said. “This is one that needs a lot of work.”

While the old Printz house undergoes a loving restoration, a tiny blue church just a block away stands vacant and neglected, its bell tower empty, its windows boarded up.

Built about 1900, the church was the soul of the community, with residents gathering for Sunday Mass, baptisms, weddings, funerals. For many years it housed St. Rose of Lima, before that church moved to a new site on Royal Avenue.

George Lemos’ parents were married there. Rubin Banaga, whose father owns the building, remembers receiving his first Communion at the low wooden altar.

Banaga now lives next door, in what was once the rectory. His band, Rubin and Dos Guys, rehearse in the church, and Banaga occasionally throws parties there. The walls are covered with rock posters, the floor littered with empty beer bottles. A lone wooden pew is all that remains of the old church furnishings.

“It is too bad to see it this way,” Banaga said. “We do plan to fix it up at some point.”

There is a third central spot in the neighborhood, less historic than the old Printz house and the church, but no less important for many residents. It is the old corner market.

Low and flat-roofed, the pink stucco box is unremarkable but for a multicolored mural of the Virgin Mary smiling beneficently over 3rd Street.

The store was run by George Lemos’ great uncle, and everybody shopped there, picking up a six-pack or a carton of eggs and the latest neighborhood gossip. A neighbor painted the mural, and store regulars helped keep it looking fresh, adding a touch of color or a flower here, dabbing out a spot of graffiti there.

“There was an old stump in front and there was always somebody sitting on it,” Lemos said. “It was a mainstay of the neighborhood.”

Now the store is closed, converted into an apartment. Nora Gonzales lives there with her husband and two sons.

She remembers hanging out at the old market.

“I was sad when it closed,” she said. “That’s why I like living here. I feel like part of the store is still here with me.”