‘Good Neighbor’ Believes Masters Is More Worthy of the Honor

Gary Hendrickson hates graffiti so much that he decided to make a symbolic gesture that he knows may cause controversy and subject him to harsh criticism.

Last month, Hendrickson’s commitment to fighting graffiti and bettering his community brought him the honor of being named the North Hollywood Residents Assn.’s Good Neighbor of the Year.

But Hendrickson believes there is someone more deserving of the award. He plans to rededicate the award to William Masters III, who shot and killed one graffiti vandal and wounded another in Sun Valley in January. Hendrickson said he will present his honorary plaque to Masters in the near future.

Masters killed Cesar Rene Arce, 18, and wounded David Hillo, now 21, in a confrontation just after midnight Jan. 31 under a Hollywood Freeway overpass. Masters said the two youths challenged him and one brandished a screwdriver after he witnessed them painting graffiti and took down their car’s license plate number.

Masters was never charged in the killing but was recently convicted of carrying a concealed firearm in public and carrying a loaded firearm in public. He was sentenced to 30 days removing graffiti, three years of probation and forced to give up his guns.

Since the shooting, Masters has been called a racist vigilante by some and hailed by others as a law-abiding citizen who stood up to street thugs.

Hendrickson, who founded an antique car club and donates the use of his cars to raise money for community organizations, said he wouldn’t go so far as to call Masters a hero but considers him a symbol for people who hate graffiti.

“To me, he is the outstanding citizen of the year, period,” Hendrickson said.

But the idea of rededicating the award doesn’t sit well with Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who presented the honor to Hendrickson at a Nov. 18 ceremony.

“I am as anti-graffiti as Hendrickson but I don’t think Masters should get an award for shooting someone,” Katz said.

Maria Fant, president of the North Hollywood Residents Assn., said her group is steering clear of the controversy. “It’s his business what he does with it,” she said.

Magnetic Appeal

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If the refrigerator magnets are in the mail, it must be election season again.

That’s what’s happening in the fractious 39th Assembly District’s Democratic primary. Here, the distinction of being the first to the mailbox goes to candidate Jim Dantona, a former aide to Lt. Gov. Gray Davis and ex-political factotum to ex-state Sen. David Roberti.

The period for candidates to file for this seat, now held by Richard Katz, a term limits victim, is not even over until Monday, yet Dantona has already sent out a 20,000-piece mailer featuring refrigerator magnets.

It’s too early to be hitting up voters, say the pushers of conventional wisdom. The impact of such a project will be forgotten by Election Day and the money spent on it wasted.

But Dantona’s veteran political consultant, Larry Levine, scoffs. “In a crowded field of candidates,” Levine said, “there’s some advantage to break out of the pack early.”

In his letter, Dantona says the No. 1 issues facing the East Valley are gangs, drugs and graffiti, as he tries to establish himself as a home-grown product of “the community.”

“I grew up here . . . went to school here and raised my own family here,” says the Dantona piece. All this may be true. However, the 47-year-old political operative has been registered to vote in Ventura County since at least April, 1990. In fact, as far as the Ventura County registrar-recorder’s office is concerned, he’s still a voter there. Of course, Dantona has also been registered to vote in Los Angeles County since September, 1994. The explanation for the double registration? Ventura and Los Angeles counties are not talking to each other, Levine said.

Meanwhile, if Dantona is getting off to an early start, the campaign of former Assemblyman Jim Keysor for the same seat is undergoing an identity crisis.

Keysor, who filed his declaration of intention to run Wednesday afternoon, has dismissed his political consultants, Steve Afriat and Rick Taylor, and has begun, in his words, to reassess what kind of campaign he intends to run, including how much he’ll budget for the race. “Spending a ton of money is not the way to go,” Keysor said in an interview Thursday. Earlier, Keysor had talked of running a $300,000 campaign, with half coming out of his own pocket. Keysor’s family owns a profitable plastics company in Saugus.

To save money, Keysor is thinking about carefully targeting the voters he goes after. “My poll showed that one-third of the voters are white and over 65,” Keysor said. “I don’t have a lot of name identification with these people, but a lot more than the other candidates because they remember me when I represented the district before.” Keysor represented the area during the 1970s.

Keysor also said it was a revelation recently to walk the district gathering signatures for his nomination petitions. “Boy, this is a Latino district!” he exclaimed. “Just go out and walk it and see.” But when asked if the district, which indeed does have a 65% Latino population, should be represented by a Latino lawmaker, Keysor said: “Not necessarily--just the best person.”

Tony Cardenas, a realtor backed by powerful Latino lawmakers in Sacramento, intends to run for the seat while two other Latinos, longtime activist Jose Galvan and Michael del Rio, a former aide to state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), have said they intend to file for the seat. The deadline to file is Monday.

Also running for the seat is attorney Valerie Salkin, a former aide to state Board of Equalization member Brad Sherman.

Funding Fuss

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Although Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick and Mayor Richard Riordan are considered allies in the effort to put more police on the streets, it has lately become a strained alliance.

That was evident this week, when Chick called for a special meeting of her Public Safety Committee to discuss a new police recruitment center in the basement of a city-owned building in Downtown Los Angeles.

Both Chick and Riordan support the center. After all, the city is going to have to recruit massively in order to meet the mayor’s campaign promise of hiring 3,000 new cops by 1997.

But the project has hit a snafu that triggered angry words from Chick. It seems a police contingency fund that was supposed to pay to construct the center had been used to hire personnel to staff it.

Nonetheless, Riordan and the Police Department, without notifying the City Council, instructed the General Services Department to complete the construction project.

On Wednesday, Riordan and police officials were in front of Chick’s committee asking permission to pay off the $665,000 cost of the center by using bond money that voters approved in 1988 to build new police stations.

Chick was steamed.

“We know it may be legal, but is it wise? Is it in good faith with the people?” she asked Bob Stresak, a Riordan public safety aide.

Chick and Councilman Mike Feuer, a fellow committee member, were also teed off that Riordan and the police went ahead with the project and failed to tell the council sooner about the financing problem.

Riordan, a multimillionaire businessman turned politician, once described his get-it-done attitude thus: “It is easier to do something and ask forgiveness than to ask permission.”

Staring down at Stresak, Chick said she has heard Riordan’s quote, and “it’s getting to be a tiresome motto.”

But it was police brass, not Riordan’s aides, who apologized for keeping the council in the dark.

“I think what happened is we had a good idea, tons of good intentions but poor execution,” LAPD Assistant Chief Mike Piersol told Chick.

When all was said and done, the committee voted to delay the funding decision for two weeks and instructed the Police Department and Riordan’s office to find another funding source for the center.

Swap Meet

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The office of Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon is getting new faces and losing familiar faces this week. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Alarcon, who was elected 2 1/2 years ago to represent portions of the northeast San Fernando Valley, is losing legislative deputy Hilary Norton and press deputy Delia Ibarra and hiring Nancy Burke as his planning deputy.

The changes represent the latest staff shuffle in Alarcon’s office--a fact that has irked some constituents, who complain that they never get the same staffer when they call his office for help.

In his first year in office, Alarcon had five staff changes. In fact, Ibarra is the third press secretary Alarcon has hired since taking office.

But the latest changes also show how some council staffers don’t ever leave City Hall, they just change titles and move to a new office.

For example, Alarcon hired Norton out of the office of Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, where she worked as his legislative deputy. But now Norton is leaving Alarcon to become deputy chief of staff for Councilman Richard Alatorre.

Then there is Alarcon’s new planning deputy, Burke, who used to be planning deputy for Councilwoman Ruth Galanter before taking a job at the city’s Planning Department.

Ibarra’s story is slightly different. She used to be on President Clinton’s speech-writing team and is leaving Alarcon to become the speech writer for U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.

But Alarcon’s chief of staff, Annette Castro, said the changes are common in politics and simply reflect the fast-paced nature of the work. She also defended the changes, saying that Alarcon’s staff has plenty of knowledgeable people to respond to constituents’ complaints.

“That’s the nature of politics,” she said. “If you look at City Hall, there is a lot of shuffling.”

In fact, before Castro worked for Alarcon, she was Mayor Riordan’s press secretary.

Maybe City Hall should provide programs--you can’t tell the players without ‘em.