Lighting Up L.A., or at Least One Corner of It

Good-deed doers are the darndest breed. They’re never quite what you’d think. You hear about a corner of the city where people are making a difference, and you expect, I don’t know, some father figure in Hush Puppies who makes good eye contact. Instead, here comes an ex-actor in a T-shirt who won’t shut up.

“So hello! Are you lost? Welcome to our neighborhood! Nice to see you!” Principal Dan Horn bounds down the sunny, bougainvillea-flanked sidewalk toward St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church. Bright-eyed and smiling, he’s 37 and looks about 20. A quinceanera has just let out, unleashing a horde of brown-skinned teens in formal wear. Horn is the white guy in baggy shorts.

We are strolling through Los Angeles’ Pico-Union district, the barrio that for decades has served as a port of entry for the city’s Latino immigrants. There was a time when people didn’t stroll in Pico-Union. They couldn’t. It was a war zone overrun by gangs and demoralized by drugs and poverty.

Now--well, if you haven’t seen it lately, you should visit. Talk about making a difference. The place is alive. Men play pick-up basketball. Police cruise the beat. Where a crack house once stood, St. Sophia’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral has put up apartments with balconies. At St. Thomas, Sunday Mass is so jammed that the church sets up speakers for the worshipers who spill onto the lawn. On a corner once so prone to drive-by shootings that people used to brick up their windows, a ladies club is selling tamales for charity.

“People used to come here for job interviews and not get out of their cars,” says Horn, who runs the award-winning St. Thomas the Apostle parochial school near Pico and Normandie. Now he heads toward a wrought-iron gate from which a clutch of pre-teens emerges, babbling. Horn smiles, and their reaction is something, uh, different: Making good eye contact, the kids chirp, “Good afternoon.”

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There are some cities where it’s easy to make a difference, easy to go into a dark corner and light a candle or two. Los Angeles isn’t one of them. The city is so vast, the need so overwhelming. You can spend a lifetime here and never see what good a light as small as yours could possibly do.

In that respect, Dan Horn was typical. Raised back East, he had come to L.A. to be a movie star. After two years with little more on his resume than a stint as a gofer for the singer Helen Reddy, Horn fell back on his college degree in education, less to do good than to eat.

When he saw a help wanted ad for a principal at St. Thomas, he confesses, his first thought was that principals don’t need to ask permission to leave campus if, say, someone invites them to audition for a role. One look at the place, though, and the need overwhelmed him. The schoolyard was weed-strewn. The paint was peeling. There was virtually no money, and yet, of the school’s 300-plus kindergarten-through-eighth-grade students, 95% relied on scholarships.

And there was the neighborhood, populated by gardeners and nannies and dishwashers, poor people who yearned for a better life for their children than the one that beckoned from the filthy streets. Horn did the only thing he knew: He started talking and didn’t stop until people saw the light.

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That was nine years ago. In the interim much has happened, both at St. Thomas and beyond. The local churches got politically active, hosting community forums, pestering the city, empowering the neighborhood parents. At St. Thomas school, Horn opened his mouth and talked. And talked.

He talked to the archdiocese and got money to clean up the campus. He talked to the federal government and won a designation as a Blue Ribbon school. When a college student who loved dance volunteered to launch an after-school drama program, Horn talked to his bosses. In the past five years, scores of immigrant children--some so shy they could scarcely say hello in English--have entertained the community with Broadway musicals.

On Oct. 2, the kids will perform again, to raise money for scholarships. Their benefit will star, of all people, Helen Reddy. Principal Horn, it seems, talked her into it. Also on the bill will be kids like Liliana Ornelas, the daughter of a Mexican-born maintenance man, and Christopher Argueta, whose dad is in El Salvador. Their parents, they say, are proud of their music, though they don’t always understand the words.

Some might think they’re pursuing a lost cause, imagining this vast city could shine its light on a little barrio benefit. Prove ‘em wrong. Call the school. Buy a ticket. Light a candle. Make a difference.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com