A war mom
Below is a story that ran in today's paper. This version has about 100 additional words at the end, as the print version had to be tightened for space.
RIALTO — Five years is more than just a number to Sherrie
Lovell.
It’s measured in stretches of anguished absence from her boys, in the
changes to their faces, their bodies, their personalities. They have
grown into men and warriors, husbands and fathers, all while serving
in the military in wartime, a wartime that seems interminable.
For Lovell, five years is an era.
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“You have to believe in their mission,” said Lovell, a 49-year-old
who will soon become a grandmother for the second time since her
country invaded Iraq in 2003. “But at the same time you wonder how
many more years we can do this. It’s sad. It’s been too long.”
On the five-year anniversary of war in Iraq, Lovell’s small and
tight-knit family is part of the nation’s so-called 1 percent, a
sliver of America’s 300 million whose lives have been more or less
consumed with war for longer than America’s involvement in World War
II.
Her biological son, her stepson and her son-in-law have served in the
war theater at various points over the last five years. They have
aged and changed, mostly on the other side of the globe. Her daughter
is pregnant with Lovell’s second grandchild.
Today’s tableau is a striking change from the 1960’s and 1970’s
of Lovell’s youth, when protests against the Vietnam War often
included blistering attacks on the troops themselves.
Lovell said she remembers the acidic passion of that period, and is
always mindful of keeping her ambivalence about the war separate from
her support of the troops, of her troops.
It’s a tightrope she’s toed for five years.
“I didn’t think we needed to be in Iraq in the very beginning,”
Lovell said. “But at the same time, I back each and every one of them
in what they’re doing there.”
Five years ago, her son Shawn Hanley was a wiry
22-year-old. Today, he’s a strapping 6-foot-2-inch Navy veteran of
two combat tours, one-year stretches in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Spending most of his 20s working for a nation at war has left little
time for the things most 27-year-olds do, his mother said, but he has
managed to get engaged to a local woman.
"He was home from a tour in Iraq and he met her when he went
out to get car insurance,” Lovell remembers. “He proposed right
before he was redeployed to Afghanistan ... they use a lot of Myspace
to keep in touch while they are apart."
Five years ago, stepson James Patterson was a
wispy 23-year-old. He hasn’t grown physically, but the Army weapons
expert who trains Iraqi soldiers has aged emotionally after three
1-year combat tours.
Patterson is now married to an army medic, the union born in the
throes of war.
“He’s been shot at many times,” Lovell said. “I tease him that being
so skinny has helped. But like Shawn, he’s different now when he
comes home. Both of them are more quiet, older.”
Five years ago, Anthony White was a smart-alecky
19-year-old from Sacramento looking to join the Navy. Now, after two
year-long tours in Iraq, White is a father. His wife, Lovell’s
daughter Jamie White, is pregnant again and due in June.
But he hasn’t been there for much of his son Kayden’s 18-month-old
life. He didn’t see Kayden’s first steps, didn’t hear his first
words, and couldn’t attend the boy’s first birthday.
War does that to young fathers.
“When daddy comes home, Kayden doesn’t recognize him,” Lovell said.
“At least not at first. When you come home and your child doesn’t
hardly know you, that’s hard on him.”
At her Rialto home, surrounded by mementos and photos of war and
family, Lovell confronted the elephant in the rooms of all military
families: Tragedy.
She cracked a folder containing documents to pass on assets in the
event of a combat death.
“Shawn said if anything happens, here’s this book,” Lovell said. “I
pray that nothing happens.”
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Andrew Edwards. E-mail Andrew here.
Robert,
This is off topic, I couldn't find a "contact" for you. This deals with S.B. County, so , maybe it's on topic.
L.A.'s once-peaceful Drew Street has become a crime fortress, where family bonds thwart police efforts to stop the violence.
By Sam Quinones, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 30, 2008
The brick house with the enormous black satellite dish in the driveway sits empty now, the tenants evicted. The building is fenced, its windows are boarded and a For Sale sign hangs outside.
Last year, the Los Angeles city attorney's office sued to close the house at 3304 Drew St. in Glassell Park as a public nuisance. Authorities are now seeking to demolish it.
For more than a decade, the Satellite House, as it's known in the neighborhood, was the center of the drug trade on two-block Drew Street, where dealers and gang members have operated with near-impunity for years, police said.
During at least two raids at the house since 2002, according to court documents, officers found guns and drugs as well as surveillance cameras, laser trip wires and a shrine to Jesus Malverde, the Mexican folk hero who has become drug smugglers' unofficial patron saint.
Occupying the house until recently was Maria "Chata" Leon and her family.
An illegal immigrant and mother of 13, Leon has a lengthy arrest record and three convictions for drug-related crimes -- for which she's served no prison time, according to court documents. She declined to be interviewed for this story.
Police said Leon, 44, and her extended family were deeply involved in the drug trade that has made Drew Street among L.A.'s most notorious.
The neighborhood came to the attention of most people only after undercover police officers got into a shootout there last month with gang members who had allegedly killed a man in another Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood. But police had long had Drew Street on their radar.
It is "hands down the worst area of Northeast Division," said LAPD Officer Steve Aguilar, who has patrolled the street for five years. "I've worked two other divisions and even in South-Central. This is worse."
The Leons -- and members of several other immigrant families on Drew Street whom authorities have charged with criminal acts -- hail from the town of Tlalchapa in the state of Guerrero, which has a reputation as one of Mexico's most violent regions. Police estimate that dozens of members of these extended families belong to the Avenues gang.
"It's been a safety net for them to rely on each other -- brothers, cousins and all," said LAPD Lt. Robert Lopez. "The likelihood of someone within your family ratting you out is really low."
Drew Street's Tlalchapa contingent began arriving in the 1970s, some lured by the promise of jobs at the Van de Kamp canned-food factory a few blocks away, residents and former factory workers said.
"We created a little Guerrero up there," said Robesbier Aguirre, who worked as foreman at the now-shuttered plant. Aguirre and others said his family was not part of the criminal activity on Drew Street and left when it got bad.
Poverty sent many Tlalchapans to the U.S. looking for work. But so did the violence stemming from the local drug trade and deadly family feuds, authorities and former residents said.
One place people from Tlalchapa landed was Drew Street. The early arrivals lived mostly in peace, said Epifanio Serrato, Tlalchapa's mayor, who met his wife on Drew Street when he lived there in the early 1970s before returning to Mexico.
"The first of us there had no problems," Serrato said. But as their numbers grew, the area's white residents began selling to developers, he said.
The number of apartment buildings doubled. City records show that from 1984 to 1992, builders razed 30 single-family houses and erected apartment complexes in their place, adding 480 units to the 12-square-block neighborhood -- between the Glendale Freeway and Forest Lawn Memorial-Park -- that includes Drew Street.
Living conditions began to resemble those of many public housing projects, particularly on Drew Street, where the concentration of apartments was the greatest. Poor people crowded into the long, tall buildings, which were hard for police to patrol and easy for criminals to hide in. Parked cars packed the streets, providing gang members a line of armored defense.
Tlalchapans moved into many of the new apartments, said former Drew Street residents. As they did, neighbors said, fights, parties and heavy drinking became more common. Minor disputes escalated into gunplay.
"There wasn't a weekend you didn't hear gunshots in the air," said one neighbor, who bought a house on the block more than 20 years ago.
By the early 1990s, some immigrant families who initially came to escape violence in Guerrero began to leave.
"People with aspirations didn't want to be there," said one former resident.
Another resident who left was Aguirre's brother Flocelo, also a onetime foreman at the Van de Kamp factory, who feared that his sons would end up dead or in jail. He moved his family to Dalton, Ga., where carpet factories have attracted Tlalchapans from Drew Street.
As more Tlalchapans arrived on Drew Street, "it was the law of the revolver," Flocelo Aguirre said. "By 1990, you couldn't live there anymore."
A string of arrests
Still, many Tlalchapans stayed. One of them, police said, was Maria Leon. She was 21 and destitute when she showed up in 1985, according to those who knew her.
By then the Van de Kamp factory was slowly shutting down, so Leon took menial work elsewhere, residents said. Later, she told a judge that she sold gold jewelry door-to-door.
She was arrested at least 14 times dating to 1985, according to court records. But she never seemed to spend much time in jail.
In 1992 Leon was arrested twice on Drew Street on suspicion of possession of drugs for sale, including PCP and marijuana, according to police records. She was not charged.
In 1994, Leon was arrested for narcotics possession, police records show. She was given diversion and the case was dismissed. The next year, she was sentenced to jail and probation for selling drugs.
Over the years, Leon had 13 children with five men, according to court records. Several of her sons are documented gang members, according to police. One of Leon's sons, Daniel, was killed last month in the shootout on Drew Street after allegedly firing an AK-47 at officers.
The family ties on Drew Street, along with the poverty and overcrowding, have made it hard for police to penetrate, authorities said. Police report having seen lookouts standing atop apartment buildings, watching for cops or rival gang members, ready to whistle or chirp their Nextels in warning.
In one 2002 raid at the Leon house, Glendale police arrested Maria Leon and found cocaine, marijuana, a Tec-9 assault weapon, ammunition, a small explosive, packaging material and a cellphone that kept ringing with customers' drug orders, according to court records. Inside were six children under 10 years old, including Maria Leon's youngest child, a 3-month-old boy.
An older son, Jose Leon, pleaded guilty to possession of drugs for sale in connection with the case and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Maria Leon pleaded guilty to child endangerment and possession of an assault weapon and was sentenced to six years and eight months for child endangerment. She was given credit for 259 days served and turned over to federal immigration authorities in May 2003. She was deemed a "deportable alien," but it's unclear if she was deported. A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on her case, citing privacy laws.
One of Leon's sons, Francisco Real, was convicted in 2002 of immigrant smuggling, according to court records. Three other convicted drug dealers with close ties to the Leons also have been arrested on suspicion of immigrant smuggling, authorities said.
Trying to make a dent
Police task forces, gang sweeps, arrests -- even a 2002 gang injunction -- have done little to break the bonds of family and culture that breed criminal activity on Drew Street, officials said.
"We've really put a lot of focus on trying to build a community there," said Councilman Eric Garcetti, whose district includes the street.
But Drew Street renters come and go. Landlords say they often can't find reputable tenants to fill their units.
The city said that "I'm not supposed to have gangs out in the yard" in front of the apartment building, according to one landlord who requested anonymity, fearing reprisal. "I'm the one who is supposed to go and chase them out? I don't think so."
Finding a witness to testify is almost impossible, police said. So gang members are rarely charged with violent felonies. Without witnesses, police must rely on cases they can make themselves, usually for narcotics possession.
Other government efforts to crack down on criminal activity on Drew Street have been frustrated.
In 2002, the city built Juntos Park on the street; the park, which cost $6 million, has since become another spot for drug dealing, neighbors said.
Last year, the city installed surveillance cameras without bulletproof glass. Gang members shot them out the first night.
"Now we have to put in cameras to monitor the installation of cameras," Garcetti said.
Prisoners in their homes
Drew Street today remains a drug marketplace, police said. But there have been some changes over the years.
In 1998, the city down-zoned the area to prevent more apartment construction. A Neighborhood Watch group recently formed, though it meets in secret.
Maria Leon and her family have moved to a two-story house in a new subdivision in Victorville. But police believe the family remains a force in the street's drug trade.
In Tlalchapa, 2,000 miles away, Drew Street is so notorious that it's called el barrio bajo -- "the low neighborhood."
Nearby, some homeowners said they feel imprisoned in tidy, graffiti-free homes they've tried unsuccessfully to sell.
"We don't let the kids play in the front," said one resident, who did not want to be identified. "The drug dealers are so common they're part of the scenery. We need something permanent done. We're barely surviving here."
sam.quinones@latimes.com