INSIDE STORY : Found: The AmericanDream : In a World That Is Based on How Far We Can Get, Most Solano Canyon Residents Cannot Fathom Going Anywhere Else

Ttucked away down the hill from Dodger Stadium, impervious to the incessant ruckus of the Pasadena Freeway, is the nicest neighborhood you’ve never heard of. Almost hidden, the tiny village of Solano Canyon is dismissed by baseball fans and commuters as a mere tangle of streets to use for traffic shortcuts. But it is cherished by its residents as the only home many have ever known.

Here on the edge of downtown, bordered by Chinatown and the Police Academy and cut in half by the hovering 110, an American dream lives. It is not the glitzy version of success but a more soulful kind, in which families beget families and, mostly, they stay. For a lifetime. By choice.

It is a place where cultures are wedged together, if not always in spirit, at least in respect. Where there are bars on windows of faded clapboard houses and chained dogs in concrete front yards, but very low crime. Where, despite relatively low property values, the elementary school is one of the most honored in the state.

In the eight blocks that make up Solano Canyon, two and three generations of families live together or side by side in small, affordable bungalows and stuccos

ranging in decor from the pristine to early Salvation Army. There are the impoverished, who live in crowded conditions in converted basements, and the accomplished, whose homes gleam with ride. Some of the homes are ramshackle, which can cloud the perception. Most of Solano is very Middle America.

The 700 residents are mostly Latino or Chinese, with a few Italian, Anglo, African American and Vietnamese families thrown into the mix. Together they have developed a collective voice of sorts, a cry against perceived and real invaders, that rises above the Elysian Park hills and unites the neighborhood in its constant battle with the aftermath of progress --the zooming police cars and morning commuters seeking shortcuts; the impenetrable crawl of cars to and from Dodger Stadium that determines, for about 81 days a year, what time residents go to the supermarket.

So what is the glue that holds these disparate people together? For about a month, I spent time with the families in Solano Canyon, savoring some of the best quesadillas known to humankind, attending Mass at the local Catholic Mission, all the while trying to compile a notebook full of luminous anecdotes and quotations. Instead, I found something better: contentment. In a world that seemingly is based on how far we can get, most Solano residents cannot fathom going anywhere else. It’s not that they don’t have dreams; it’s that, for many, they have found theirs.

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Her long brown hair blowing off her shoulders, her dark eyes glistening, Lydia Anna Moreno walks a visitor around the village and tries to explain why she has lived here all her life. She points to the lush landscape of what may be the last empty lot on the hill, noting that in recent years a couple of outsiders have bought plots and built houses. She smiles at the house in which she grew up, saying her mother put bars on the windows when serial killer Richard Ramirez was on the loose. She nods at a man walking toward the church with a leather jacket and a bad pompadour, saying she has seen him before, but knows he doesn’t live here.

She is a college graduate, a licensed contractor who works for a real estate brokerage and investment firm. She is 32, and beautiful, and initially the thought of it all begs the question: Why is she still here? Why not a more upscale community?

“My family and I have a lot invested here,” she answers. “I went to school here, I grew up with everybody and I know everybody. It’s like a big family. We do a lot of things for each other, for the church, for the neighborhood. If anything happens where someone is being affected, we try to do something to help.”

Like the time a local thief broke into several homes. “This has happened,” says Lorena Aguilar, a 24-year-old teacher’s aide at Solano Avenue Elementary School, who has lived in the area her entire life. “Somebody has stolen something and everybody goes to that [the crook’s] house and says, ‘Hey, give me my stuff back.’ ”

Or the time a new family arrived and “violated” an unwritten code of neighborhood upkeep. The old-timers were more than happy to explain. The family “moved in and parked a car on their awn,” says Alicia Brown, who has lived here 60 years. “I walked by and they were outside, and they stared me down with a mad-dog look, so I just stared back. Then I said, ‘I’m Mrs. Brown, and we don’t do that in this neighborhood. We don’t know why you would park your car there.’ And they moved it.”

The key to this community is its longevity. Lydia Moreno’s family has lived here for 37 years, and is considered somewhat new compared to others. Cora and Eulalio Alvarado have been here nearly 80 years. They think everyone is new.

The Alvarados share their beautiful, newly remodeled house with a daughter and three grandchildren who stay there not because they have to, they say, but because they want to. “I have lived in other places, but there is such a closeness here in this community,” says daughter Jovita Pizana, 46, who works for the City of Los Angeles and lived in Hawaii for five years. “When you are growing up, you think it is just a regular neighborhood. But then you go out and you miss the protectiveness of living here, and that draws you back.”

“I think if I were to buy property, it would be [there],” says LAPD Officer Larry Alonzo of the Northeast Division Crime Analysis Detail, which oversees Solano Canyon north of the 110 freeway. The majority of felonies reported in the tiny area are burglaries from motor vehicles. In July, police recorded seven felonies, all of which were centered around Dodger Stadium.

“The last time I recall a major problem,” says Joe Writer, LAPD senior lead officer for the Northeast Division, “was a wayward kid in the neighborhood breaking into cars and the community galvanized themselves to apprehend him, and that was five years ago.”

Gangs may pass through the Solano area, but they just keep going, says Rolando, a local teenager. Police concur. There is graffiti on the walls, but it is not gang-related, Alicia Brown says. Neighbors are organizing a watch group to help stop it.

Residents show little concern about problems within the neighborhood, probably because they work them out. Their worry comes when the outside world threatens to encroach on the tiny enclave, whether by way of a freeway expansion or a company wanting to build a cellular tower. This is when the community really unites; when the cultural lines blur. And no single fear pulled this neighborhood together as tightly as three years ago, when the Dodgers explored building an NFL stadium in nearby Chavez Ravine. “It took about five minutes to come together,” Jackie Smith remembers.

Forty years after the building of Dodger Stadium caused uproar among Solano residents and the razing of friends’ homes in Chavez Ravine, the bitterness is still fresh, kept alive by the nnoyance of stadium traffic for six, and, if the team ever wins a postseason game again, seven months of the year. A stadium exit dumps right into their neighborhood, with the road winding through the village to reach the Pasadena Freeway on-ramps. The loud, steady stream of cars makes it nearly impossible for them to enter or leave their driveways. “Our life revolves around the games,” Lydia Moreno says. “You do your shopping and errands early and make sure you don’t come home when the game is dumping out.”

Peter O’Malley, then Dodger president and team owner (he sold the team on March 19, 1998, to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Group), says he merely wanted the community to hold off deciding on the NFL stadium until he could finish a study. He believed the findings might reveal ways to make conditions better, specifically concerning traffic. Most of his neighbors scoffed, the lingering distrust fueling their fight. “We already stand up in our living rooms for the National Anthem for six months a year,” said Alicia Brown, long the voice of the community, at an L.A. City Council meeting on the issue. “We don’t want to do it anymore.”

Dodger President Bob Graziano said he was surprised at the reaction. “I think we all were. I did not realize at the time that the communication had broken down. I realized . . . that we needed to do more.”

With Chavez Ravine seemingly eliminated as a site, the community’s anxiety quieted, but it is always on standby.

Since the early ‘80s, the Dodgers have supported Solano Avenue Elementary School with mentoring programs, free game tickets and promotional merchandise as well as college scholarships. That sweetened the relationship some, but bitterness remains.

Even a rumor that had the Dodgers moving to a newly built baseball stadium next to the Coliseum brought little comfort. “If the Dodgers leave, who is coming in?” Brown asks. “There is a lot of land up there at Dodger Stadium, and even when we heard the NFL was going to the Coliseum, it makes us wonder, what are they [the Dodgers] going to do with all that land? There is always that shadow hovering: What are they going to do next?”

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The turn onto Academy Road from the southbound Pasadena Freeway is a sharp one. If you miss it, you head straight for the red-tiled roof of the Solano Avenue Elementary School. After the turn, go slow, or you could hit a dog lying lazily in the road.

Ivy Beverly marvels at this scene from her house, built into the hill above the road. A 29-year-old African American single mother of two, she moved here last year from Chicago after finding the house on the Internet. She rented it for $750 a month, sight unseen, and based her decision mainly on the tiny but successful school, which carries California Distinguished status. It’s an honor bestowed on just 4% of the elementary schools in the state, following an arduous application and evaluation process based on test scores and overall programs, including ommunity involvement. Academically, the school ranks in the 54th percentile on the Stanford 9 standardized tests, right above the national average. L.A. Unified School District elementary schools are on average in the 28th to 30th percentile.

The school’s success can be attributed in part to parental involvement, which officials link to an attendance rate of nearly 98%, the highest of any elementary school in the district. Last ctober, a Times analysis of performance of 435 L.A. elementary schools placed Solano at the top. The analysis, which used a statistical procedure called linear regression, was based not only on 1998 test scores but social and economic factors. This year, Solano was recognized among the highest achievers of 456 L.A. schools that receive Title I funding, federal assistance awarded to schools in lower economic areas. The key, says teacher Patricia Schwarz, is that the “children have to work to fail. It is not a school that will let you go.”

An unscientific tracking survey of sixth-grade graduates shows that 30% to 50% apply to college, says Principal John Stoll. “The Dodgers have offered [college] scholarships to our students since 1984--it used to be three, onetime $1,000 stipends each year, now it is one $1,000 scholarship--so we get the information to the students we can find and they send their applications back to us,” Stoll says.

Of the 260 students enrolled in the school, 10 are African American. The majority, 59%, are Asian, and 34% are Latino. There are seven Anglo students, three with red hair. “One time a teacher asked if she could borrow one of my redheaded children for her class,” parent Ruth Gooding says, “because she was having a hard time explaining what red hair was.”

This demography did not scare off Ivy Beverly. “I don’t feel any prejudice here, and my kids haven’t had any problems,” she says. “When I got here, my neighbors were so nice, they let me use their phone and brought me food. We even had a birthday party for my son and a lot of kids from the community came. I don’t think we have ever had Hispanics at our birthday parties before.”

There is a mutual respect for different cultures--even if it is at a distance. Most Asians and Latinos answer the same when asked how they get along with each other. “Let me put it to you like this: They stay to themselves and we stay to ourselves,” says Concepcion Seja Aguilar, who has lived in Solano for 52 years.

“They don’t bother us,” says Evelyn Luis, a member of the Lum family, one of the first Chinese families to move into Solano, in the 1940s. She no longer lives in Solano, but her mother does.

But Marilyn Lee, 59, Evelyn’s sister, says she never felt prejudice growing up in Solano. “Not with all the different nationalities here. You feel it when you move into a neighborhood that is mainly white.”

Most houses are passed down through generations. To the northwest of the Pasadena Freeway, which split the canyon in two when it was built in 1940, most houses are smaller than 1,200 square feet and sell in the $130,000-$140,000 range, according to Lydia Moreno. To the southwest of the freeway are most of the larger homes and apartment complexes. This area is primarily Asian.

The two sides of Solano are connected by a graffiti-ridden tunnel that runs under the Pasadena Freeway. This is the path the children take to and from school. Bordered on the south by a menially fenced exit and freeway on-ramp, it is a source of worry for Principal Stoll. On rainy days, he checks the tunnel for homeless people seeking shelter, and complains that northbound cars flying around the sharp-turn exit will miss and hit a child. The children, however, appear oblivious to the Autobahn running through their daily path. For the most part, so do the adults.

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“I would like you to take a moment of silence,” Alicia Brown said at the dedication of a community garden earlier this year. “I know it’s hard with the noise of the freeway running behind us, but just try and think for a minute about this garden, about what it means . . . .” It is Brown’s hope that this garden will be a legacy of sorts. Solano residents, and helpers from outside, are sowing it on a huge plot of land where the original elementary school stood before the freeway was built. There will be an orchard and plots of flowers. Food will be grown here, not only to nourish the body of this historically rich neighborhood but also, they say, to meld souls. Here, their hope is, neighbors will garden, and sit, and meet. They can gaze in wonder at the half-moon curve of the jack pine that leans toward the city, like an arrow pointing toward a center. Many of the eucalyptus and pine trees in the parkland lean that way, as if bent by the Santa Ana winds coming over the crest of the hillside that juts up behind them. A reminder of sorts: You may live at the edge of the city, but you are part of its core.

On a wall bordering the north entrance to Solano Canyon is a ceramic mural, created by Didier Guedj and Judy Hamblin shortly after they moved into the neighborhood last year. Titled “A Higher Goal,” it depicts a man jumping to catch the sun, reaching for the light, for the spirit, but his legs are heavy, trying to bind him to the material world.

It is a fitting work of art for this neighborhood, where the riches in life are intangible.