None wounded more deeply by gang violence
By Beth Barrett, Staff Writer
Luz Maria Gomez joined the peace movement in North Hills in May, four months after her 17-year-old son, Luis Rodriguez, joined the list of victims of gang violence.
He was gunned down as he sat in a sport utility vehicle on Langdon Avenue near Roscoe Boulevard in January, the same tough streets that Gomez and dozens of other women who lost children to gang warfare marched along with banners and slogans that contained a single message: Stop the violence.
"There was some sadness in my heart," Gomez said, but she held out hope that things might change "if we can touch the kids' hearts so they have more love for life."
Nobody feels the pain of gang violence in Southern California more sharply than the mothers who have seen their children claimed by the long epidemic of gang violence.
And through marches, support groups and action committees, many of these grieving mothers from throughout the region are trying to turn their bitter heartache into a crusade for peace - and peace of mind.
Laura Esqueda of Sylmar is still burning with grief over the slaying three years ago of her son, Luis, by a gang member. She works in a preschool program at a Pacomia elementary school, spending much of her free time talking to other parents and urging them to "watch your children, who they go out with."
But she can't get over the loss of her son, who had graduated from Kennedy High and was working in Ventura.
"I remember telling him (at graduation), 'This is when life starts.' He had so many dreams. But it ended for him. Those words still come back to me."
In the Covina area, Lorraine Vargas had no idea she lived one block from Margaret Ramirez until their sons were killed by gang members two months apart and now are buried 10 plots apart. They helped support each other and reach out to others, especially gang members' moms, with their own stories of how gang violence destroys families and their hopes and dreams.
Lorraine Vargas cries for her murdered son, Frank Salinas, during a support group meeting for parents of murdered children. Through marches, support groups and action committees, many grieving Southland mothers are trying to turn their bitter heartache into a crusade for peace - and peace of mind
Along with hundreds of other parents across the Southland, they meet regularly in churches and other venues to share a grief so deep that only those who have walked in their shoes can appreciate the wounds that the slaying of a child inflicts on families, friends and communities.
At a recent meeting of the San Gabriel Valley chapter of the nonprofit Parents of Murdered Children Inc., parents and grandparents talked about the horror and pain, both emotional and physical, that never fully goes away after a gangster kills a young person.
Ramirez described her bond with Vargas like this:
"There are days she'll call me and say, 'I can't take it. I sit in the dark. I don't want to live.' I say, I don't want to live either, but if I have to live, then you have to live. If I have to go through it, you have to go through it."
It took five years of going to court before Maria Alvarez, 52, of Long Beach saw a resolution of the charges against the men who killed her son, Sunny Elijah Peralez, 8, in a gang drive-by shooting in East Los Angeles.
Francisco Beltran, 24, was sentenced previously to a life term in prison for the crime but the second defendant, Albert Orozco, 24, whose Ghetto Boys moniker is "Gremlin," got a deadlocked jury because some witnesses recanted their testimony and others refused to testify - a common problem in gang prosecutions because people fear retaliation.
The grin on Orozco's face when he pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter still haunts Alvarez.
"It hurts," Alvarez said, weeping outside the courtroom, with two of her daughters. "I can't see my child no more, and they're laughing. It hurts me; I cry every day. I pray God forgives them."
"This has destroyed our family," said Estrella Avina, Peralez's older sister. "It's unfair. He'll be alive and my brother is gone."
Another image also haunts Alvarez, that of her son walking down the stairs about 10 p.m. on Aug. 6, 1999, in his favorite cut-off joggers and white T-shirt to shut the door just as the gunfire erupted outside the apartment, a bullet striking his head.
"My son had a strange look in his eyes. It was like somebody saying bye to you."
Sandy Marino of Whittier said her family was torn apart when her son, Roy Brian Marino, 19, was killed in Granada Hills on March 30, 2002, by a gang member who wanted status in a Pacoima gang. Ronnie Molina, a member of Paca Trece, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 50 years to life.
Marino said she gets through every day wearing a "mask" to hide her pain.
"When I'm alone, I take it off and cry."
The mothers of North Hills have found another way to deal with their grief: They have become friends and provided emotional support for one another even though their children were members of warring gang factions.
Ever since their first march, on Oct. 12, 1997, they have seen themselves as missionaries for a peace.
"We felt very happy, once we saw the people gathering around us," Doris Castaneda, a North Hills community volunteer who has worked as a housekeeper and school aide with 11 children, said in recalling that day. "There were tears in many eyes, many tears."
Banding together in the community group Familias Unitas, and taking for inspiration a fathers-outreach program at Langdon Avenue elementary school, they have stood by one another, and have given each other the courage to step out from behind the anonymity of their apartment doors and speak out.
Their marches have usually brought periods of calm but eventually an incident would trigger a new wave of violence and more tears would be shed.
Luz Maria Gomez has shed a lot of tears since her son was shot Jan. 23. The suspect in the shooting is Jesus Murguia, 22, of Panorama City, who authorities say was a member of the TJ Locos - a gang warring with Langdon Street.
Gomez, her two daughters and a son and other family members, eight in all, live in a sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment behind high security fences on Rayen Street in the heart of the San Fernando Valley's worst gang area. The living room is dominated by two shrines to her son, Luis, including his ashes, several pictures and candles.
She knows her son would be alive if she could afford to live in a safer neighborhood. But Gomez, who came to Los Angeles from a small town outside Mexico City in search of "a better future," makes about $15,000 a year cleaning homes and working in the garment industry. She pays $600 in rent and can't afford a car, let alone pay more for an apartment elsewhere.
"Because of my job, it was impossible to get out," she said. "Who wouldn't like to live in a better community in Granada Hills or Calabasas? But it was impossible to give them that life.
"It's hard for us to be mothers and fathers to our sons. Our kids escape from us."
Working with others who have lost children has helped Gomez get through her tragedy, given her the strength to look beyond her own heartache and to see how she can help others.
"I have learned to develop myself," Gomez said. "I feel the necessity to ask for help, to ask mothers to help other kids. As mothers we have an obligation not just to our kids, but to other kids of the community. I hope not to stop but to keep going for the love of other kids."
.Maybe these words posted up here will be read by someone and help:-)