Panic Pierces Illusion of Safety

Dropping kids at day care or camp is so mundane an activity, it obscures the dread hidden in every parent’s heart--that any child not at home is somehow unprotected.

The worst of those fears were realized Tuesday morning when a gunman walked through the open front door of the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills and opened fire on the only people in sight--little children and people paid to take care of them.

The gunman wounded five, then walked out of the low, plain building, heading west on foot.

The center is next door to a church, in the middle of a prosperous neighborhood, full of palms and roses and foothill views. The area is quiet, residents said, very quiet--not the sort of place where anything out of the ordinary ever happens.

In addition to being middle class, it is, like much of Los Angeles, mobile. Half the residents have moved in over the last five years, according to census data.

The Jewish community center is a bulwark of stability amid all that change. The facility, behind wrought iron fences and cinder-block walls, is a collection of tan stucco buildings, except for the red classroom out back and the bright blue and yellow playground equipment.

Up until the shooting, it had been another perfect sunny day and the center had been its usual beehive. The sky-blue swimming pool draws people from other less lucky community centers throughout the Valley. Early morning senior swimmers had come for their “arthritis class,” as one joked, and gone. A “Mommy and Me” swim class for infants had just ended.

A new session of summer camp had begun Monday. More than 100 children were enrolled. An additional 43 attended the center’s nursery school.

The older children had taken off on a bus for a field trip to Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance. Those left behind were mainly adults in an art class, the younger children and the center staff. It was, police said later, what is known in their business as “a soft target.”

The gunman walked through the front door of the main building. Isabelle Shalometh, the grandmotherly receptionist--”our treasure,” one staffer said later--sat facing the door, as she has for almost two decades.

Shalometh, 68, was at the reception counter when the gunman started firing, according to her son-in-law, Paul Goldin.

Gunfire grazed her back and arm, but she was not badly hurt. Bullets ripped through a stack of papers on a lobby desk, shredding them.

“The girls in the back offices were screaming,” Shalometh said later.

Andy Broski, a teacher, was in his classroom when he heard the “da-da-da-da-da” of automatic weapons fire. Another teacher, who did not want her name used, was upstairs trying to get her arts and crafts class settled down.

“I thought there was something falling, but I kept hearing it,” she said. Then her friend, Mindy Finkelstein, ran in, bleeding.

Rhea Nagel was a student in another classroom: “At first I thought it was just a jackhammer. I looked out and saw a man shooting down the hallways and at the reception desk. He ran toward the front and around the back of the building.”

‘It’s Always Very Quiet Back Here’

After the gunman left, some teachers and students walked hand in hand through the lobby and out of the building. Some of the children thought the blood on the lobby carpet was spilled paint.

“Outside was just scary,” one teacher said. “We could still hear the noise, and we just ran.”

Maribel Didonato has lived down the street for 12 years. “I’m scared because it happened in my own backyard,” she said. “It’s always very quiet back here. I’ve never heard of any problems in this area. He could be hiding anywhere, and it’s very scary. You don’t expect things like this to happen in your neighborhood.”

Within minutes of the attack police cruisers were en route, and almost as quickly parents--scattered across town at homes and jobs--began to hear the horrible news.

A grandmother listening to the radio called a secretary, who tracked down a boss. A relative in Israel watching cable television telephoned her American cousin.

Michael Ourieff of Van Nuys was eating at Michael J’s restaurant when his ex-wife called. Their daughter Marissa was at the school. He ran out and sped to the center.

Another father, Mike Schuman, heard the news on the car radio in Playa del Rey and “flew down the freeway.”

Tearful parents surrounded the community center, quizzing each other for information while they waited, clumped against the crime scene tape.

“You would have heard already if he had been shot,” one woman said in an effort to comfort another, who was shaking as she stood at the edge of the police line.

Some parents used cellular phones to call counselors sequestered inside the center with some of the children. They passed the phones around, anxiously asking after their children. Some were able to reach their sons and daughters.

“Are you OK? I love you. I love you. I love you,” one woman said to her daughter before hanging up. She wiped away tears and smiled. “She sounds OK. She sounds quiet, but she sounds OK.”

One by one, officials read off the names of parents to give them information about the status of their children.

“That’s me! That’s me!” men and women cried as their names were called and they pushed through the crowd, ducking under the tape.

Later, Katey Pianko held tightly to her 2-year-old, Zoe, who had been playing in the little red schoolhouse inside the center when the shots were fired. Pianko was still waiting to find her 5-year-old son, Sam.

She had been sitting on the floor of her Valencia home, sorting through old photos, when her mother called from San Diego.

“I’m watching the most horrible thing on TV,” she said. “What school do your kids go to?”

“What are you talking about?” Pianko asked, panicked. She called her husband at his Pasadena law office, in hysterics. They spoke by cell phone as they both rushed to the school.

“They’re OK,” Ted Pianko assured his wife. “They’re going to be OK.”

At the school, they paced and waited. Suddenly, the bullhorn squawked. “The parents of the injured children have been notified already,” an official said. “If you haven’t heard anything, your child is fine.”

The Piankos, whose son was not harmed, breathed a sigh of relief.

Rich Baltimore of Woodland Hills, who is in sales and works out of his home, waited with his wife to find out about their children Melissa, 6, and Evan, 9. When a reporter commented on how calm they seemed, he said: “You can go crazy, and it doesn’t help. We know our children are safe.”

Rosa Sobolevsky said that when she first heard the news, she felt guilty because her daughter, Sacha, had begged not to go to camp. “You always watch television and listen to the news, but I never thought it would happen here,” she said.

Osnat Minz, a 21-year-old counselor from Israel, was shocked by the violence. “I can’t believe I came from Israel and then I saw this here,” she said. “I heard shots. It sounded like firecrackers.”

Other parents thought of Oklahoma City or of Littleton, Colo., places with little in common except quick death and long regret, places suddenly much closer to this quiet, middle-class community in the San Fernando Valley.

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News updates, video and photographs related to the Valley shooting are available on The Times’ Web site: https://www .latimes.com/shooting.