Youths’ Plea to Gangsters: Stop the Violence

Gang violence doesn’t go unnoticed by Ventura County’s youth. In fact, some kids study it carefully . . . and try and learn from it.

After Dino Zarate, a hard-core gang member turned college student, was gunned down in south Oxnard last month, a small group of students at Frank Intermediate School wrote about it for a class assignment.

Zarate, 19, was shot in the head after returning to his old stomping ground to see some friends. A rival gang member has been charged with the killing.

One student named Karla pleaded in her essay for gangsters to stop the violence. “There are families who are scared to death about all the things you do,” she wrote.

Marilyn said gang members were the only ones who stopped and helped her and her mom when their car broke down. They’re not all bad people, she wrote, but the community should donate more money for scholarships so people can leave gangs and get more education.

Fernando wants all the “homies” to stop using drugs, and Oscar asked gang members to find the courage to leave gang territories and broaden their horizons.

“If we show them that the ‘barrio’ or ‘hood’ is not as important as your success, your life and where you stand in life,” maybe they will leave the gangs, Oscar penned.

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After 50 years in law enforcement, Ventura County Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Gullon has retired.

Gullon, a strapping native New Yorker with a shaved head and bushy black mustache, left the department earlier this month after serving it for 38 years.

For the last 25 years, he was the watch commander--the guy who sits in the hot seat, night in and night out, and supervises the men and women working the streets.

“I always enjoyed that,” he said in a telephone interview from his Ventura home. “I liked being on patrol, and I like dealing with those deputies. It puts you closest to the people we assist.”

Terribly admirable, but the really cool stuff about Gullon isn’t his days in Ventura or his time at the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. It’s his “G-man” days when he worked for the U.S. Treasury Department.

Like a page from a spy novel, Gullon spent six years in the 1950s doing undercover work in Mexico and Puerto Rico as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, now know as the Drug Enforcement Agency.

He met and gained the confidence of drug smugglers, bought dope from them and carried lots of fake IDs. On one mission, he was undercover for two months.

When Gullon arrived in Ventura, after meeting former Sheriff Bill Hill at a seminar, he started the department’s first organized narcotics unit and also taught cops about drug investigations at Ventura College.

Now, at 71, he’s trying to figure out how to be just another citizen.

“It’s hard to get used to being relaxed, but my wife and I travel a lot, and she’s making sure I have a lot of projects,” Gullon said.

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What’s the lesson here?

Last week, sheriff’s deputies in Thousand Oaks said the former president of the Parent Teacher Assn. at Lang Ranch Elementary School had been arrested for allegedly stealing more than $3,000 from the organization’s coffers.

This is the second such incident involving east county schools.

Robert W. Wilson was sentenced to 36 months’ probation after pleading guilty to grand theft earlier this year. His case faded from the radar because he entered his plea about the same time of the Alaska Airlines crash.

In Wilson’s case, authorities said the 52-year-old Newbury Park man allegedly stole $43,900 from music booster clubs at Newbury Park High School and Sequoia Middle School. Wilson had been treasurer of both clubs.

In this latest case, detectives say Tracy Ross, 36, also of Newbury Park, allegedly committed forgery to get her hands on the funds. Detectives won’t say what they believe her method of operation was, other than that she had access to the money.

“She was put into a position of trust,” noted Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Margaret O’Donnell.

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Boo!

The Great Pumpkin Day is tomorrow, and the Ventura County Fire Department has issued several Halloween safety tips so your bundle of joy doesn’t wear a costume that could go “poof!”

Buy costumes made of flame-retardant material and avoid materials that are easily ignited, such as cotton, authorities warm. Use battery-powered lights instead of candles inside jack-o’-lanterns, and instruct children to avoid open flames.

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Holly J. Wolcott can be reached 653-7581 or at holly.wolcott@latimes.com.