Priest of the ‘Hood

Residents of a small north Fillmore neighborhood remember a time when the sounds of gunfire piercing the night sky startled them awake.

They recall a time early in the decade when gang members lingered between graffiti-covered buildings and children didn’t dare play outside after school.

“Back then, you would have never seen anything like this,” said resident Lauro Recendez, motioning to a group of young people who stood on the sidewalk nearby, casually chatting in the late afternoon sun.

The difference, residents say, came in the form of a streetwise but mild mannered deputy with a knack for talking.

But Deputy Max Pena, dubbed “priest of the neighborhood” for the many Fillmore families he has counseled, retires today after 28 years of policing the city--the past four from the north Fillmore police storefront he helped build.

A tight budget has prompted city officials to eliminate Pena’s position, replacing his more than $104,000-a-year slot with a civilian employee costing about $50,000 annually in salary and benefits.

“It’s time,” said Pena, 55, his eyes lost in a face creased with thought. “When they said they were changing the position, the question was, ‘Do I retire or do I go to patrol?’ But I’ve slowed down. The new guys are having kids, I’m having grandkids. I don’t want any of them to have to slow down for me. It’s time to move over.”

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Still, residents who credit Pena for Fillmore’s dramatic turnaround in crime worry that without him, the sounds of nighttime gunfire could return.

“If he’s not here, things won’t be the same, and everyone knows it,” Recendez said. “We’ll never find someone who cares like he cares.”

Pena began his law enforcement career in 1966 as a reserve officer for the Santa Paula Police Department before training at the police academy to become a full-time officer.

Pena’s face still lights up with pride as he remembers his first police job offer. Then-Fillmore Police Chief Reid Hunt made the call in August 1971.

“He said, ‘Hey, junior, I heard you want to be a cop,’ ” Pena said, a modest grin curling the corner of his lips. “He said, ‘Well, report here in full uniform.’ That was one of my proudest moments. That’s where my loyalty to this city comes from. They gave me my first job. They gave me a chance.”

Turning Point for a Cop’s Cop

Pena got to know his new community first as a patrol officer. A few years later, he was assigned to the detective bureau, investigating everything from burglaries to homicides.

Young and enthusiastic, Pena was a cop’s cop. He was tough, aggressive, eager to make arrests and lay down the law.

But a tragedy in his personal life was about to give him a new perspective on police work.

In 1977, the oldest of his five children, 13-year-old Lisa Marie, died in a car accident. Shortly afterward, the chief asked Pena to become an advisor to the city’s Explorer program, which allows teenagers with an interest in police work to become department volunteers.

“I said, ‘No way,’ ” Pena remembered. “ ‘I’m a street cop, not a baby-sitter.’ ”

But the chief insisted, warning: “Either you do it or I’ll order you to do it,” Pena said.

“I think he saw I needed to do this,” Pena said. “Instead of letting me dwell on my tragedy, he wanted me to concentrate on helping the youth.”

Pena reluctantly accepted the assignment and discovered a new passion for his work.

“It was a turning point in my life,” he said. “Ever since, that’s all I’ve been doing--work to help the young people.”

That dedication became even stronger when Pena lost a second daughter, 15-year-old Shelly, in 1986 when her heart stopped after she inhaled chemicals to get high.

“When it happened to me a second time,” Pena said, “I worked even harder to get involved with kids, get involved with gangs. I wanted to help these kids and their parents so they wouldn’t have to suffer the way I did.”

By 1989, now a sheriff’s deputy after the city began contracting for services in 1987, Pena noticed a distinct change in his community.

Gang fights were common and often escalated into stabbings or shootings. Residents in north Fillmore reported sleeping on the floor at night hoping to avoid stray bullets.

“On the weekends, especially,” Recendez said, “you would wake up and hear it. You could hear fighting, hear the shootings.”

Anxious to reduce the number of young people involved in the violence, Pena started going into the area’s schools to counsel troubled kids. The students learned to trust him. Some began turning up at his home to talk about topics from fights with a girlfriend or boyfriend to thoughts of running away from home.

“That was kind of hard sometimes,” Pena remembered. “They would come by and I would be asleep and they’d say, ‘Please. I really need to talk to him.’ So I’d wake up and it usually wouldn’t be anything real big deal. But it was important to them.’ ”

So Pena would listen, sometimes offering advice, sometimes just listening.

Storefront Wish Granted

Pena recalled the time one student came to say his girlfriend was pregnant. “He told me, and he hadn’t even told his parents yet. So I was like, ‘Go home. Go home and tell your parents.’ ”

Six years ago, department officials began looking for a way to pay for a storefront in the most hardened section of north Fillmore.

Armed with a federal grant to cover the cost of three community resource officers, the department renovated an abandoned building on Lemon Way riddled with graffiti.

In a matter of months, red bricks covered the graffiti and a playground with picnic tables was placed in the backyard. The storefront officially opened in September 1995.

Still, rumors that the center was actually a jail spread in the community. Threats came in that the building would be burned to the ground.

To squash the rumor, Pena took to his bicycle, riding door to door to tell residents what the community center was all about--a place to go for help, to file police reports, or just to talk.

The threats against the storefront dwindled, and residents streamed in.

“I come in about once a week,” said 21-year-old Omero Martinez. “Usually just to say hi or to talk about any problems. I came in to tell Max about when my little girl was born and how excited I was. I just talk to him about anything.”

Residents grew used to seeing the deputy on the streets, too, talking to gang members about their lives, counseling parents about how to handle disputes and other problems with their children.

Within a year after the storefront opened, crime dropped 36% in Fillmore.

And the residents keep coming in. Pena has painstakingly recorded the name of each person he has helped and how he assisted them. On the eve of his retirement, more than 65,000 entries cram his diaries.

Today the storefront has three computers for schoolchildren to use, and an after-school tutoring program flourishes five days a week.

Despite the center’s success, a squeezed budget prompted the city to cut community resource officers after the original grants ended. One deputy was released in July 1996. Another was reassigned in January. Pena is the last to go.

“We’re trying to do the best we can with the resources we have,” said City Manager Roy Payne. “But we do hate to see him go. We can directly attribute the turnaround in the crime rates here in Fillmore to the opening of that storefront and his hands-on involvement.”

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Pena, who hasn’t taken a vacation in five years, acknowledges he’s tired. Still, it will be a struggle to say goodbye.

“It is hard to give up,” Pena said. “I have to be honest.”

So difficult, in fact, that Pena has applied to work as the new civilian at the storefront on a part-time basis. City officials have not determined who to hire, so Pena is patiently waiting.

But residents say they will never forget Pena and the many small miracles he worked in their once rough-and-tumble neighborhood.

“I was just doing my job,” Pena said. “That’s all, just my job.”