Unsolved Slaying Prompts Reward Offer

Gustavo and Virginia Alvarez had heard their friends rave about the guacamole at Villa Sombrero.

So on warm night over the July 4 holiday weekend, the couple left their children at home and set out for the restaurant on York Boulevard in Highland Park.

Instead of a carefree evening, the Alvarezes got out of Virginia’s new Chevrolet Tahoe and were confronted by a gunman in the parking lot.

The man fired once, hitting the 37-year-old mother of three in the face, and then, investigators believe, fled with an accomplice in a small white car.

Virginia Alvarez, a secretary in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, died immediately from what coroner’s spokesman David Campbell described as a single gunshot wound to the head.

Seven months after the July 5 slaying, Los Angeles Police Department investigators said they had little to go on other than a general description of a suspect in his 20s.

Theories abound, including the possibility of a botched robbery attempt, though they could not recall a crime in the area that matched the Alvarez slaying.

Detectives say the killing could have been committed by someone who knew the victim, or that it could have been related to her job.

“We don’t have many leads,” said veteran robbery-homicide Det. Otis Marlow at a news conference Wednesday at Parker Center. “We are looking for clues.”

At the news conference, LAPD Capt. Al Michelena and City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa announced that the city was offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to prosecution of a suspect in the case.

Gustavo Alvarez said that before he left the vehicle, he heard a loud noise. He then found his wife gravely wounded.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Dennis Burns, who worked with Virginia Alvarez on and off between 1990 and 2003, described his colleague as a dedicated mother who was always willing to pitch in for colleagues. News of her killing hit everyone hard.

“She was loved by everyone in the building,” said Burns of Alvarez, who worked in the Internal Affairs Bureau in the City of Commerce. “Everybody was shocked. I was flabbergasted when I got the cal.”

Burns said Alvarez was getting ready to transfer to another assignment and had already cleaned out her desk.

The victim’s mother, Antonia Rivera, who appeared with half a dozen other relatives, begged anyone with information to call police.

“There’s ... someone out there that knows the truth,” Rivera said. “You have turned lives upside down,” she said to the killer or killers. “We will never give up in finding you.”