HEARTS OF THE CITY: Exploring attitudes and issues behind the news. : Images to Live Up To : Latino veterans hope to conquer negative stereotypes by giving youths a personal view of history and heroism.

Whenever John Espinosa sky-dives these days, he is on a mission far more ambitious than simply landing safely on terra firma.

Espinosa, a 55-year-old Army veteran, wants to help educate the public about Latino soldiers, provide a role model for Los Angeles youths and keep alive the memory of the Los Banos, Philippines, rescue mission by the U.S. military in 1945.

Luckily for him, he is not alone.

Veterans scattered throughout Southern California are busily, if somewhat quietly, making themselves more visible than your average old-timers through sky-diving, special community projects and lectures vibrantly colored with firsthand experiences.

Leading the charge are Rudy Garcia, president of the Rudy Hernandez Chapter of the 11th Airborne Assn., and Alfredo Lugo, an Air Force veteran who produces documentaries.

“The kids in the high schools don’t know there are guys like me and him,” said Garcia, 59, of Whittier, a former paratrooper who served in the Army during the Korean War. “All you see are tattoos and drugs. That’s the hero. That’s wrong.”

So Garcia and Lugo, who say being overlooked is nothing new to members of the 11th Airborne, use slices of history to help emphasize their message about local veterans. The vast majority of the more than 100 local chapter members are Latinos.

One major event for the 11th Airborne, overshadowed at the time and in history by the Marines at Iwo Jima, was the rescue of 2,147 civilian prisoners being held by Japanese soldiers at an internment camp in Los Banos, about 40 miles southeast of Manila on the island of Luzon.

The rescue was on Feb. 23, 1945.

Sister Patricia Marie Callan, 88, was one of the prisoners. Callan, who spent 60 years in the Philippines and now lives at the Maryknoll Sisters retirement home in Monrovia, still remembers the details.

“The last two weeks our food ration was hot water. That was all,” she said. “The writing seemed to be on the wall.”

But then the U.S. military surprised the Japanese with a morning invasion. Paratroopers dropped from the sky.

“They came down from heaven in answer to our prayers,” she said, adding that the Japanese were expected to execute prisoners that day.

“Their plan was to burn the barracks where we were living between 8 and 9 o’clock. The paratroopers arrived at 7.”

Garcia, a slender, gray-haired man who makes his living as a semi-retired mechanical design engineer, beams with pride as he tells the story of Los Banos.

Although too young to have played a role in that mission, Garcia praises the effort because of its reputation as one of the most precise maneuvers in U.S. military history.

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Army families are well-schooled about the mission and its heroes, but the public is not, he said.

Various members of the local chapter said the same is true of the nation’s 38 Latin American recipients of the congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for heroism.

The local chapter is named for Rodolpho P. Hernandez, a soldier from California who received the honor for his heroism during the Korean War.

“I never read too much about them in history books,” said Lugo, 51, who also works as an engineer at KOCE Channel 50 in Huntington Beach. “I wanted to do something about it.”

Lugo, who was an aircraft technician while in the Air Force, said he strives to publicize achievers within the Latino community because there are more than enough public images of Latinos as gangbangers, illegal immigrants or teen-age parents.

The most visible occasions for the chapter so far have included a couple of sky-diving events by several members--one marking the 50th anniversary of Los Banos in February, another marking the Fourth of July--and, naturally, the traditional parade appearances. But other efforts went relatively unnoticed.

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The veterans group, by donating paint, carpeting and other essentials about three years ago, helped prepare a special room at a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s station in Whittier for interviewing child victims of sexual or physical abuse, said Sgt. Thomas G. Sirkel.

“They approached me and asked if there was anything they could do to help,” Sirkel said.

At the time, he said, a special room was planned as a way to put children at ease during tough episodes.

The help from the veterans made a big difference to the youngsters, he said.

“It’s pastels. The furniture is their size. It’s quiet. It’s private,” he said. “It’s just a friendly room where they can discuss private things.”

Garcia and Lugo said presentations at local schools so far seem to be generating more respect for veterans and more interest in recent history.

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Espinosa, who is known as the jump master because he coordinates activities for the Aztec Skydivers, said the former paratroopers are determined to show the public that Latinos should be recognized as peacetime soldiers, people who fight hard to raise their families properly.

“Society, the general population, looks at us like lowlifers,” said Espinosa, a truck driver who lives in Norwalk.

“We’re trying to show the young folks and others that there’s another kind of life rather than hanging around drinking beers and doing nothing. We have all kinds of professional people.”