Anti-Crime Activist Rush Selected Mayor

Dorothy Rush, known for her fight against gang violence, will be the city’s mayor for 1998--the fourth woman to hold the post in La Habra’s 75-year history.

Rush, 63, who was elected to the City Council in 1994, said she will continue to try to improve the city’s image. “I don’t like it when people say that this is a bad place,” she said. “It’s not. It’s a friendly place to come to.”

In the last couple of years, crime has dropped, especially in Rush’s Grace-Pacific neighborhood. “Things are a lot better now,” she said.

From 1992 to 1995, Rush’s Grace Avenue house was shot at and vandalized several times. Bullets punctured walls and cinder blocks, and a bicycle sprocket and a Molotov cocktail crashed through windows. Rush was hurt once when a cinder block flew through her bedroom window and hit her back as she lay in bed. The attacks began after she organized a Neighborhood Watch program and began reporting what she suspected was gang activity.