Of Sowing and Reaping

Among decent folk--the sort who pay their taxes, obey the law and quietly pursue their dreams--the life of Salvador Saldana passed last week with barely a notice. He was just another gangster gunned down on a street few decent folk frequent, at an hour few decent folk are out, for a reason few decent folk can fathom. If they think at all about Saldana’s death, decent folk are apt to punctuate those thoughts with two words: Good riddance.

Indeed, Saldana was a thug who spent much of his 23 years locked up for one thing or another. As a founding member of the Langdon Street gang, Saldana organized a criminal group responsible for drug dealing, beatings and even murders. His misdeeds and those of his crew were chronicled in a 1997 Times series about life in a North Hills neighborhood held hostage by the gang’s violent fiat.

But the series, “Orion Avenue, A Life Apart,” also detailed Saldana’s efforts to leave his criminal past behind, to establish a normal life with his girlfriend and son, to get a job, to become decent folk. He moved away from Orion Avenue, a jumble of rundown apartment buildings where drugs are peddled on the street. He took classes so he could get a job as a sanitation worker. He wanted to buy a house. He wanted to raise his son--once the Langdon gang’s mascot--and teach him to play baseball.

Last Sunday around midnight, Saldana was back on Orion Avenue. Who knows why? But that’s where he died, shot dead by some other thug in a passing car. The dark scourge Saldana helped create ultimately claimed his life. Justice, perhaps, but also a reminder that neighborhoods left to rot often infect those who live there. Saldana was both a product and a producer of that rot.

He created more than his share of evil in this world and was a victim of his own bad choices. His death shakes those who loved him and cheers those who hated him. For the rest, nothing. But countless young men across the San Fernando Valley strive to be the next Salvador Saldana. They see drugs and violence and gangs as their path to a twisted respect and a tainted wealth. They thrive in neighborhoods where parents are too busy or too high to stop them, where teachers simply move the troublemakers along, where cops are seen as the enemy.

These neighborhoods are more common than most decent folk want to believe and the slide from good to bad can happen quickly, almost invisibly as apathy lets evil infiltrate. Along Orion Avenue, it took less than a decade. Salvador Saldana embodied the darkest shadow of the American Dream, a nightmarish realm where right and wrong get so mixed up that it’s hard to tell the difference. That’s something decent folk should lament--and fight.