Rolling Over Neighborhood Graffiti

It’s a curious sight when Vincent Anthony Serino’s anti-graffiti crew hits the street. Toting paint supplies on classic three-wheel bicycles, Serino and his young helpers form a duck-like procession as they pedal through the Modjeska Park neighborhood in search of vandalism.

“All the kids love the three-wheel bikes,” said Serino, 39, who has been collecting the heavy-duty contraptions for the last decade.

Designed for use in industrial settings, the three-wheelers--including a 1948 Monarch that “looks like Pee Wee Herman’s bike”--have been refurbished by Serino and pressed into duty as part of his battle against taggers.

For the last year, Serino has enlisted neighborhood children and their family members to join him Saturday mornings on graffiti paint-out expeditions.

Serino said he tries to make the work fun for the children while at the same time teaching a lesson in community pride.

“The kids just have a ball doing it,” he said. “There are no rules about painting within the lines. If they drip a little bit in the dirt, it doesn’t matter. My daughter says, ‘I get paint in my hair, and Dad doesn’t care.’ The kids like that.”

Serino, a marketing manager for a financial services company, said that along with the enjoyment of getting messy with paint during the outings, “hopefully it’s a day about learning right and wrong.”

“When we’re doing this I say, ‘Look how terrible this looks! You wouldn’t want your house to look like this.’ Maybe they’ll take a stand. Maybe they’ll make a difference.”

Serino is a volunteer in the city of Anaheim’s Adopt-a-Block anti-graffiti program. Code enforcement supervisor Richard LaRochelle, who is in charge of graffiti control for the city, said neighbors like Serino are proving to be “a big help.”

“It saves the taxpayers quite a bit,” said LaRochelle, who noted that the city provides painting supplies for the volunteers at no charge.

“Graffiti is down tremendously,” he said. “But every so often we have flare-ups in certain areas, and that’s the importance of volunteers. We try to get to it as quickly as we can, so these [vandals] don’t get the recognition for having their tag up there.”

LaRochelle said he has not heard of any confrontations occurring between taggers and the neighbors who paint over graffiti. And Serino said he generally receives positive feedback from the community.

“The immediate neighbors are recognizing that I’m the guy on the bike going out and doing it,” Serino said. “I had one guy kind of yell at me,” he added, but that was apparently because the man did not realize what Serino and the children were doing.

As for the young “ducks” who accompany Serino on the three-wheelers, their enthusiasm doesn’t seem to be waning, he said: “My daughter asks, ‘Hey, when are we going out again?’ I tell her, ‘When those gangs hit again, we’ll go out.’ ”

To report graffiti in Anaheim, call the city at (714) 254-5200. For information on volunteering to paint out graffiti, call (714) 974-9481 or (714) 254-4443.