A Moment of Silence, Please, for a Man Who Sacrificed All

The flag still flies at half-staff in front of the home where Filbert Cuesta was raised. The walls of the bedroom he once occupied remain adorned with the posters and pictures he put there.

A kid’s teddy bear is perched on the neatly made bed that was once his, and near it is a letter to the tooth fairy he wrote when he was 8.

It has been almost three years since Cuesta, a Los Angeles policeman, was shot to death while sitting in his patrol car outside a noisy party in the Crenshaw district, waiting for backup.

But, to his parents, it still seems somehow possible that he’ll walk in the door, arms outstretched, smiling broadly, full of life and potential, a living, breathing element of their pride and love.

“I know that all of this is something we will have to let go,” his mother, Rose, says standing in the doorway of the small corner bedroom. “But I can’t.”

The memory of her young, handsome son entwines the home in south Whittier like the haunting melody of a song, drifting out of silence when least expected, filling her head.

It is especially compelling now. A reputed gang member, 23-year-old Catarino Gonzalez Jr., is currently on trial for Cuesta’s murder. As I write, a jury is pondering his fate. Someone has to pay for the death of a mother’s son.

*

I meant to write this column for Memorial Day, but instead I took time off to get away from Memorial Day. I weary of the drums and bugles, the words and statues, that elevate war to a spiritual level. We spend more time honoring dead warriors than we do trying to keep them alive.

But if there must be statues, then there ought to be one for the young men and women we send into the streets to help maintain the orderly nature of society. Its inscription should read, “I Am Human Too.”

The shadow of the Rampart scandal still falls over the LAPD. Racist overtones of indiscriminate police shootings continue to plague the army of the night that patrols our streets. But in a department of almost 10,000 uniformed officers, the numbers who defame their uniforms and violate their oaths are small.

I wanted to remind myself of that by visiting the home of the Cuestas on a quiet street where children play, and where neighbors look out for each other. I wanted to remember that only the nature of our duties divides us one from the other. We all have hope. We all know terror.

*

Filbert Jr. was an only child, and the home on Alclad Avenue was the only one he ever knew. A bright and caring boy, he volunteered at Whittier’s Continuation School to teach gang children to read. Both Rose and Filbert Sr. felt certain that someday he’d be a teacher.

Then one day, without warning, he came home and said he’d passed the test to become a Los Angeles policeman.

There was fear, and there was pride. The old admonition generated by a television show--”Be careful out there”--assumed an uneasy reality. The streets of L.A., of any large city, hide dangers in their darkness.

Cuesta’s father, a trucker, is a Vietnam veteran and knows more than most the peril that armies face. He would not have a gun in the house and swore that he would never let his son go to war.

But when their boy graduated from the Police Academy, the Cuestas took the whole neighborhood to dinner. More than 100 people who’d grown up with the smiling, fun-loving young man sang his praises. The village was proud.

And then the village mourned.

The last time the Cuestas saw their boy was on Aug. 3, 1998. He was married by then with two small children but dropped by every Monday to visit his parents in the home where he’d grown to adulthood.

He hugged his mother and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “The last thing I told him,” she says, “was ‘Hijito [little dear], be careful. Take nothing for granted.’ ”

Less than a week later, he was dead.

It was odd standing in the middle of the bedroom that this city soldier had occupied. A life ended in its prime leaves a presence in the space it once filled. The trauma of violent death resonates in those left behind.

Pictures of the boy on the wall, from kindergarten to the police academy, assume a life of their own.

“He loved the world,” Rose says softly. “He wanted to go out and save the world.”

“He wanted to help gang kids,” the father says. “He’d have helped Gonzalez had he come to him.”

I drove slowly away from the Cuesta home, through the neighborhood of neatly kept houses and carefully tended gardens. I could hear laughter.

And as I thought about the piece I would write, what kept filling my head like a eulogy to youth was the note that Filbert Cuesta, the child, wrote to the tooth fairy. It said, “Dear Fairy. I lost my tooth because I dropped my football. My tooth went with it. So please don’t be mad at me please. By Filbert. I love you.”

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He is at al.martinez@latimes.com.