All the Dead Young Men : Violence: At Risher’s Montebello Mortuary, one in 10 burials involves youthful victims of guns and gangs.

The damask draperies, wingback chairs, dimmed chandeliers and solemn music in the anteroom of Risher Montebello Mortuary bespeak a gentler time, when funeral directors usually laid to rest the elderly, who died of natural causes at a natural time.

But now guns and gangs have changed all that. And so Robert R. Risher, the second-generation owner of a family business, is burying ever more young men--shot, stabbed, slain execution-style or killed during high-speed police pursuits.

Risher, who conducts about 350 funerals a year, says one in 10 of his burials is now gang-related. He rifles through a stack of case files on his desk: A teen-ager and his best friend, shot together. Another young gang member kills a buddy by accident, showing off a new weapon, and takes his own life. A deadly car crash involving a gangbanger fleeing police at 120 m.p.h. A young husband, shot by a rival gang member as his wife and child race in terror up the street.

“They all leave an impression,” said Risher, a laconic man in his mid-40s, stumbling for words when asked if any of these premature deaths grieved him particularly.

At his mortuary, the proliferation of untimely and unnatural deaths, particularly among young Latino men, has mushroomed in the last half a dozen years, Risher said.

County coroner’s statistics confirm the pattern.

In 1988, 368 of the county’s 1,518 homicide victims--24%--were Latino. By last year the proportion had doubled: 890 of the 1,811 victims--49%--were Latino. Although the county homicide total fell last year, from 2,065 in 1993, the number of Latino victims remained constant. The proportion of county homicides in which a firearm is used has risen from 35% in 1988 to 63% last year. The one factor that has not changed significantly during that time is the age of the victims: Between 55% and 60% each year are under 30.

Many of these dead young men can be found in Section R at Resurrection Catholic Cemetery, less than a mile from Risher’s Mortuary. No disrespect intended, but these are the cheap seats, at the outer reaches of the graveyard, far from the plaster statues of St. Martin de Porres, Our Lady of Charity and St. Francis of Assisi who guard the more expensive graves. Plots in Section R, hard by a chain-link fence and a tattered apartment complex, cost $450, compared to more than $1,000 elsewhere in the cemetery. Often the Archdiocese gives them away for free.

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Paying for these funerals is a strain for the immigrant families of Montebello and nearby East Los Angeles, Risher said. Commonly, the money comes from a carwash organized by the dead man’s family or gang. They trumpet the event with street-corner signs, much like those in Hollywood hawking maps of the star’s homes. And they soap and polish the cars wearing T-shirts reading “Rest In Peace,” sometimes with the dead gangbanger’s nickname. On occasion, Risher said, a scheduled funeral must be postponed while the down payment is raised.

Even then, these are modest affairs, often just a graveside ceremony, without a preliminary service at a church or in the mortuary chapel. That eliminates the cost of a procession to the cemetery, which under California Highway Patrol regulations means a $100 escort for every dozen cars and can run $1,000 alone for a popular gang member.

Even with a discounted or free grave site from the Catholic Church and a pared-down funeral from Risher--say, $1,200 rather than the more routine $2,000-$3,000--many of the families find it cheaper to bury their young back home in Mexico. For less than $500, based on rates of $59 for 100 pounds, the average body can be flown to Guadalajara in a casket and an air tray, Risher said. There, burial at a municipal cemetery or on the family farm is all but free.

For the dead who are illegal aliens, the options are even grimmer, said Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the county coroner’s office. These young men often have documents in names other than their own and can be difficult to identify. Sometimes family members are reluctant to come forward and claim the body for fear of deportation.

The coroner’s office puts out feelers to immigration authorities and to the Mexican consulate, Carrier said, and sometimes advertises for next of kin in the Spanish-language media. But often to no avail. Unclaimed bodies, of gangbangers and others, are sent to the county crematory. There the ashes are held for three years, then scattered in a rose garden nearby.

Risher finds that the parents who come to his mortuary to claim their next of kin are rarely shocked by the circumstances of the deaths.

“They’ve seen it many times before,” he said. “They bury one brother, then two or three years later they bury another brother, or a nephew or a cousin.”

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But under the terms of the California Health and Safety Code, it is not the parents of the deceased, but the spouse or spousal equivalent who control the remains and must make decisions regarding the burial. And in the cases that Risher deals with these days, the young dead man is rarely married and has often fathered children with various women--some or all of whom vie to make funeral plans.

“There’s a lot of fighting among themselves,” Risher said.

Brothers of the deceased, whether by blood or gang affiliation, pose another problem, Risher said, because they often seek revenge for the death. In recent years, mortuaries in gang-infested neighborhoods have been asked by law enforcement agencies to inform police of the time and place of those funerals to avert on-the-spot retaliation.

At Resurrection Cemetery, where Risher conducts many of his burials, all was quiet one recent afternoon but for a few families who had brought lawn chairs, picnic baskets and swaddled babies for graveside communions with loved ones. They sat among stone markers that did not specify cause of death but spoke volumes about young men downed in their prime.

Alejandro Luevano, 20 when he died in 1990. Jaime Quezada, 18, and Juan Jose Hernandez, 16, both dead that same year. Jorge Alvarez, a 1992 casualty, at 18. Marcos Antonio Cazarin Jr., 16; Jaime Casillas, 21, and Andres Mardueno Jr., 23--all of them dead in 1993. And Francisco and Arturo Ibarra, 19-year-old twins--” queridos hijos ,” beloved sons, the gravestone says--who were born on the same day in 1975 and died together in 1994.

Some families, Risher said, express almost a sense of relief, a feeling that death was inevitable and at least now they know where their son is. Others introduce themselves by reminding him that he buried another child of theirs just a few years before.

“It’s over now, they tell me,” Risher said. “It’s like a weight has been lifted off their backs because they don’t have to bury anyone else.”