Duty and ‘The Beast’

They call it “The Beast.”

It doesn’t live in a swamp or a sewer, or hide under a child’s bed. And it never appeared in an episode of “The X-Files” or any Hollywood slasher flick or horror film.

The Beast is a battered and paint-stained 1970s-vintage GMC Sierra sport utility vehicle parked in the back lot of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division station. Its purpose is not to scare folks but to assist a Devonshire graffiti removal team.

“We call it ‘The Beast’ because it’s a beastly old truck,” said Katie Azouz, team leader for one of the Devonshire Division’s three graffiti removal teams.

Formerly a police vehicle, The Beast is loaded with paint, brushes and other graffiti removal material and tows a 1-ton sandblaster unit donated by Councilman Hal Bernson.

Its most important cargo, however, is Azouz and her team of graffiti busters: Roy Inouye, Jack Perrodin and Mitchell Helbrecht of Chatsworth and Anne Gaynor of Northridge.

Every Thursday morning, wearing paint-stained bluejeans and T-shirts, Azouz, 50, and her team members hop into The Beast and search the communities of Chatsworth and Northridge for graffiti.

All retirees, the team could easily be out playing golf or bridge, but instead, the volunteers roll up their sleeves for community service.

“We are lucky because we have the health and the ability to do it,” said Inouye, 60, a retired grocery clerk.

Said Helbrecht, 69, a retired engineer: “Graffiti is one of the early signs of deterioration. If you tolerate low-level vandalism like graffiti, it just escalates from there.”

“We’re just ordinary people,” Azouz added. “We love our homes and families, and we are concerned for the future of our community.”

A 5-foot-2-inch bundle of energy, Azouz has been involved in graffiti removal for the last five years. Her other team members each have at least two years of graffiti removal experience. The group is one of about 15 graffiti removal teams affiliated with the LAPD in the Valley, said Ed Evans, the Police Assisted Community Enhancement coordinator at the Van Nuys Community Police Station.

Azouz’s volunteers are known for their dedication, loyally showing up each week for duty, said Erica Desmith, a volunteer coordinator at the Devonshire Division.

“It can be 110 degrees and scorching hot, freezing cold or pouring rain,” Desmith said. “They are always out there taking out the graffiti, and they’re in an area that has a tremendous amount.”

With the exception of family vacations, Azouz herself has missed just one Thursday during her stint as a volunteer. That was last summer when she suffered from food poisoning after a 17-day visit to Turkey.

“It’s something she loves doing,” said her husband, Stuart Azouz. “There had been times when we had arranged our vacations after Thursday so she can go out and do graffiti removal.”

Despite the team’s efforts, Azouz said, graffiti has become more prevalent in the northwest Valley.

“This is a real area of need,” said Azouz, a former legal secretary. “It’s a problem we have but people don’t realize how many people are out there removing graffiti, so they don’t think that graffiti is being done. But if we stop, the city would be inundated, and that’s why we’re out there doing it. Once graffiti takes over, then crime comes in.”

And removing graffiti is hard work, said Perrodin, 69, who recently spent 45 minutes sandblasting a brick wall in a residential area in Northridge.

After finishing the job, Perrodin, a retired dentist and avid marathon runner and triathlete, was covered with a fine mist of sand.

He said graffiti is like eating food. “You can put the calories down in a hurry, but it takes a long time to take it off. These kids probably put this graffiti on in two or three minutes, but it’s taking us a lot of time, a lot of elbow grease and a lot of effort to get it off.”

Every inch of graffiti that is removed is documented in a report, which is then given to an LAPD officer, Azouz said. She estimated a total of 20,000 square feet of graffiti--approximately the length of a city block--has been removed by her team this year.

Gaynor, 59, a former elementary school playground supervisor, has become something of an expert on graffiti. The most serious type, she said, is when a name is crossed out with a different colored spray paint and another name is written over it.

“That means one group is challenging another group, and that’s the kind of activity that could ultimately lead to a gang war,” Gaynor said. “But if we remove it, they don’t see it. And if they don’t see it, they won’t know that a challenge has been made.”