With Soldier Captive Far Away, His Street Endures a Siege

The cameras were waiting again Friday on Eastmont Avenue, their lenses trained on the door of the gray house decorated with a big yellow bow.

They’d been waiting since early morning in the blustery wind, but so far the house had been still.

Suddenly, just before noon, the door swung open.

Andrew Ramirez Sr., father of one of the captive U.S. soldiers who had been serving near Kosovo, stepped outside.

The news crews snapped to attention.

Keeping his head down, Ramirez walked over to a rusty mailbox at the end of the driveway.

He took out some mail.

He turned and walked back into the house.

The cameras followed his every move.

As soon as the door swung shut, the cell phones popped out.

“The dad came out and got his mail,” reporters chirped into their phones. “Yeah, we got the shot, don’t worry.”

On Eastmont, a quiet neighborhood in the heart of East Los Angeles where Staff Sgt. Andrew A. Ramirez grew up, residents are squinting under the glare of the camera lights.

Ever since Ramirez and two other U.S. soldiers were captured by Yugoslav troops March 31, residents of this modest street just off the bustling Whittier Boulevard business district have found themselves surrounded by a frenetic atmosphere reminiscent of a Simpsonesque media event.

Neighbors turn to wave to each other in the mornings and find a satellite truck blocking their view of Ramirez’s childhood home across the way. Old women carrying grocery bags shuffle by with stares of disbelief at the shiny white and black media vans lining both sides of the street. A constant stream of traffic rolls down the once-peaceful road. Reporters and producers mill around the house, hoping to land a tidbit of an interview that will make the evening news, even though there is clearly nothing new to say.

“This is probably the biggest media turnout around here since [the mid-1980s serial killer] Richard Ramirez was caught in East L.A.,” mused John Longoria, an aide to county Supervisor Gloria Molina, checking out the scene Friday morning.

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As the stakeout drags on, nothing goes unnoticed by a desperate media corps. People who stop by to sign the large card of support on the front gate are barraged with questions. The cameramen film the Ramirez dogs as they make appearances on the front porch. When a former neighbor stopped by to give the family a medal he won for completing the L.A. marathon, several cameramen rushed over to get a shot of it.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mercedes Barrera, 45, pushing a grocery cart by the spectacle Friday. “The only time I’ve seen cameras out here is when there’s been a shooting.”

When the story first broke, one neighbor counted 20 TV crews on the street in a day. When Andrew Ramirez Sr. made his first appearance last week, he was swarmed. Ducking the microphones and cameras in his face, the father tried to walk to a bus stop three blocks away as the press chased after him. He pleaded to be left alone.

“If you talk to us for a few minutes now, we’ll leave you alone,” offered one TV reporter. When he refused, a TV crew in a van raced after the bus he boarded.

Yet after the first frenzy, a curious coexistence seems to have broken out on Eastmont. The neighbors and the media have, in some ways, grown fond of each other.

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“I’ve been on stakeouts where people yell at you, call you a vulture,” said Matt McFetridge, a freelance producer. “This neighborhood is really nice. I mean, some guy came out at 5:15 this morning and got me a cup of coffee!”

McFetridge and others have stopped following Ramirez when he goes to the bus, and keep a respectful distance as he leaves his house.

Many neighbors, in turn, embrace the stakeout, reasoning that as long as the cameras are there the story will not die. They readily agree to interviews. They give sandwiches and cookies to the hungry news crews and offer to let them use the bathroom and phone.

“It feels safe to have them here,” said Trinidad Perez, 74, a 30-year resident. “That means no one is forgetting those boys who are being held over there.”

Perez, who lives down the street from the Ramirez home, feels bad that her poor English has made it difficult for the news crews to interview her. She tries to have someone nearby to interpret, she said.

Two doors down from the Ramirez home, Maria Rios has become a de facto spokeswoman for the neighborhood. She makes regular trips outside to see if the reporters need a quote, because she knows many of her neighbors aren’t home during the day to interview. She’s been on TV so much that people stop her on the street and tell her they recognize her. A KTTV Channel 11 producer gave her a station mug in gratitude.

Every morning, Rios gets up and listens for the noise of the generators in the satellite trucks outside.

“It’s a comfort to know they’re still there,” she said Friday, after fielding questions from CBS and Reuters. “That means they’re still waiting with us for Andy to come home.”