Communities Struggle to Cope With Brutal Slayings

Parents move to La Crescenta for the schools, which are among the state’s best. They settle there because the streets are clean, safe, shaded and gently sloped. They come to let their children skateboard through neighborhoods where people know one another--and one another’s children.

Wedged between the San Gabriel Mountains to the north and the Verdugos to the south, partly in the city of Glendale and partly unincorporated, La Crescenta is a community with a sense of place. Parents say children thrive there, sitting in tree houses, sprinting after one another with Super Soakers, marching up the hillsides to blue-ribbon schools.

“This is a very close-knit community,” said Linda Evans, co-principal of Crescenta Valley High School and a 20-year resident of the area. “I think this valley, with the Verdugos on one side and the San Gabriels on the other, kind of defines us as a community. You have this sense that you’re kind of surrounded and separate and protected by these mountains.”

But whatever peace of mind that was afforded by La Crescenta’s secluded setting was stripped away last week by the slayings of two local boys, Blaine Talmo Jr., 14, and Christopher McCulloch, 13, on Valley View Elementary School’s playground. The boys’ bodies were found Sunday night, bloody and beaten almost beyond recognition.

Michael Demirdjian, 15, who lives near the school, is scheduled to be arraigned as an adult Aug. 9 on murder and robbery charges in the case. Glendale police say that they are looking into drugs as a motive and that additional suspects may be arrested. Friends of the victims say Blaine and Christopher had been experimenting with marijuana for several months before their deaths.

As police try to unravel the circumstances of the killings, the community is struggling to determine what could have been done to prevent this tragedy. So far, the answers have been unsatisfying.

“You want to keep your child as safe as possible, but you know it’s impossible when something like this happens,” Evans said. “That’s what I’ve been thinking between 2 or 3 in the morning. I’m desperately trying to apply logic to it, but this is just beyond my understanding.”

‘There’s Nothing to Do Here’

Evans isn’t the only one struggling to comprehend the deaths. Residents have been attending town meetings and students have been talking with grief counselors. And there have been ceaseless discussions among the youths who gather in parks, cafes and shops along Foothill Boulevard.

There are no gangs here, they say. Poverty is not really an issue in this middle-class neighborhood. Crime rates are low. Boredom, children say, is their biggest issue--especially in summer.

“There’s nothing to do here,” said James Hahn, 15, sitting with two of his friends in the Round Table pizzeria on Foothill Boulevard, a frequent hangout of Christopher’s and Blaine’s. James is wearing the requisite buzz cut and baggy jeans. One of his friends sports an earring. “So kids get high.”

Often youths gather at places like sprawling Crescenta Valley Park or remote Two Strike Park, out of view of their parents, to drink and smoke.

Jason Sein, 18, said drugs like ecstasy, LSD and meth are becoming more widely used by children here, but not nearly so much as alcohol and marijuana. Jason, who left for college last year but was home for the summer, said he has been alarmed at how young first-time drug users are these days.

“I hear about kids who are 13 getting in trouble,” he said. “There’s a lot of peer pressure to be cool. Crescenta Valley has a lot of cliques and I don’t think they offer enough for kids to do.”

“This is not designed to be a fun place,” said Brian Landisi, 17. He has lived in Crescenta Valley all his life. La Crescenta isn’t exactly the Sunset Strip, but Brian said there are plenty of ways to keep busy. Friendships become very important in a place like this, he said.

In fact, most Crescenta Valley High School students come from Rosemont Middle School, a system that creates lasting relationships between many students and their families. Brian said he has known his best friend, Steve Keyes, 17, since they were toddlers.

But despite how sleepy La Crescenta is, Brian said, there are ways to keep busy. “We go to a friend’s house and play board games or talk. We go mini golfing or to Old Pasadena. The YMCA is a big hangout. This place is always moving; there’s always some kind of activity here,” he said.

But standing outside La Crescenta Presbyterian Church after Christopher’s memorial service Friday, Sherry Stockhamer, a longtime resident and a guidance counselor at Rosemont Middle School, said La Crescenta can lull parents into complacency.

“These kids all have beepers. They know everything about each other,” she said. “Sometimes they know more about each other than even their parents. We parents need to network, too. We need to be stronger parents.”

Nancy Riehl has organized several town hall meetings in La Crescenta, drawing as many as 800 people at a time. She has lived in La Crescenta for 24 years and has six children, all of whom went to the local public schools.

“The town meetings came about because parents were concerned that certain elements were coming into the community and trying to sell drugs to our kids,” she said. “We’re certainly a wonderful town, but we’re not a perfect town. We’re not immune to the problems affecting the rest of the country. We have no reason to think we’re behind some kind of protective fence that can protect us from evil.”

By Southern California standards, La Crescenta’s problems with teenage drug and alcohol use aren’t epidemic, but Riehl said they are problems nonetheless. She confessed that she has let her guard down from time to time, recounting a party her children hosted at her home two years ago.

“Some kids had hidden an ice chest outside with their Mickeys, or whatever they drink,” she said. “By the time I knew what was going on we had a few drunk kids here.”

By most accounts, the victims’ parents were trying to be attentive to their children’s needs. The Talmos had caught their son with drugs at least once and punished him, according to friends. But his mother, Alana Talmo, denied that he used drugs, and said she thought he was on the right track when he began to practice with the Crescenta Valley High School football team.

Christopher McCulloch had started to go back to church, and he and his mother were attending a local support group for at-risk children and their parents.

In an interview Saturday morning, Christopher’s mother, Aileen Bristow, said she would have done little differently, but acknowledged that she might have been naive about the potential dangers her boy faced. After the family moved to neighboring La Canada Flintridge, Christopher occasionally left home for several days at a time to be with his friends in La Crescenta.

McCulloch does not drive and was not always able to pick him up. Other families were willing, but she said she felt her boy was safe in La Crescenta with so many good families to look after him.

“I tended to think that the world was a safe place,” she said. “I’m just a trusting person. I never felt afraid. I just trust all the time and thought because I wouldn’t do something like this--I wouldn’t destroy any one’s entire life--I thought nobody else would do it.

“And that’s the way I brought Chris up. I was happy to settle in this valley. I wanted to let my child walk down the street and know that he was loved and not be afraid. And that’s how he was. He reached out to everybody just as I told him to.”