San Pedro Central

By Bill Schopp, president of Cabrillo Beach Youth Sailing Club Foundation

When I was growing up, I was looking for “my sport.” I assumed that everyone has a natural ability towards a particular sport. By the time I was 14, I had sadly crossed most sports off my list as it was clear they weren’t for me. Then, I discovered racing sailboats.
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San Pedro’s Marine Magnet Likely to Become the New Angel’s Gate High School – a Move That Ensures a School No Larger Than 800 Seats and Reduces Traffic Through Busing; LAUSD School Board Expected to Approve Measure Tuesday & School Officials Add a Major Bit of Enticement – the Possibility of Reopening Gaffey Street Pool. (more...)

“Saturday Night Fever;" Keep Our Very Own City Ballet Alive and Leaping!! Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 6:00 pm The Reef Restaurant 880 Harbor Scenic Dr. Long Beach (near the Queen Mary) One hour hosted bar, silent and live auction, dinner, disco dancing Advance purchase: $70 per person or $650 per table of 10 At the door: $80 per person Adults only, please RSVP by April 28th Proceeds to benefit the 15th Anniversary production of “The Nutcracker”.

ON A DAY GOING FROM BAD TO WORSE, DISCOVERING YOU ARE THE LUCKIEST GAL ON EARTH;

It was a bad day.
How bad? Testy is the best way to describe my disposition at the time.
And it wasn’t only me. Everyone I bumped into seemed irritable.
I watched people get into arguments. I was in a couple of them myself.
First, a little background:
Stepping out of my normal box, I see a San Pedro community pulsating with anger about over development, a proposed new high school, traffic quagmires and parking shortages. In general, I see a community frustrated about the way San Pedro is reshaping itself.
New families priced out of the South Bay housing market see this community as the last bastion where you can live near the water in a “reasonably” priced home – under a million bucks. They are the fresh faces in a town that prides itself on generations of tight, large families that emigrated from places such as Croatia and Italy. Newcomers bring new pieces to the puzzle. Sometimes they fit, and sometimes they don’t.
Downtown is being redefined as an upscale condo haven, but everybody’s holding their breath wondering if the new units will sell in a sliding economy. Downtown businesses are shuttering their doors or surviving by a thread. And looming budget cuts from every direction make people wonder whether they will have jobs tomorrow. On the street, I keep hearing people ask: “Tell me again, why can’t we break away from L.A.?”
It seems everyone is wondering what tomorrow will bring.
This brings me to my point. That was exactly the type of day I was having Tuesday. Small things were piling up, like the ATM failing to give me a receipt. When I went inside to get one, the clerk told me irritably she couldn’t help. The ATM is operated separately and there was nothing she could do.
Talk about a gigantic lie! That was the beginning, and it went downhill from there.
Then two things happened that made me wake up and smell the flowers. It took some time. The first was at a meeting when Ana Dragin, an aide to Councilwoman Janice Hahn, confirmed she was leaving to have her first baby.
At the end of the meeting, LAPD Senior Lead Officer Joe Buscaino and his wife Jay surprised Ana – and all of us – by presenting her with a cake and flowers. This might not seem like a big deal, but I could tell it made Ana’s day. It was so thoughtful because these people don’t work together routinely. This group meets once a month or so to discuss safety issues.
Still, I returned to my grumpy mode within minutes of leaving the meeting.
Late in the afternoon, I was peering out at the ocean as I walked along Paseo del Mar. Point Fermin Park was oddly quiet for 5 o’clock. It was nearly empty, in fact.
That’s when I saw it: a thick wave in the middle of the ocean going in the opposite direction of the current.
It seemed odd. I couldn’t remember a rock out there before. That’s when it began to rise up from the water. I suddenly realized it was a gray whale headed back to Alaska. Then it lurched out of the water in a giant leap!
It was like magic to see something like this. I looked around to find someone to share it with and didn’t see a soul. There it went again! The whale performed another spectacular breech into the air. I witnessed this three times and still I couldn’t find another soul.
Perhaps the gift would have to be savored alone.
But toward the end of the walkway, three young men were peering out at the ocean with big smiles on their faces. That made me suspect they had lucked out, too.
“Did you see the whale?” I asked excitedly. Happily, one of the men said not only had they seen the leviathan, they watched it leap from the water six times. Although he’d lived in San Pedro for years, he’d never seen anything like that before.
That put my grumpiness to rest, at least for the rest of the day. Within a few minutes the park had filled and the whale had moved on. That glimpse reminded me why we live in San Pedro: It’s because you can see the universe work its magic on a daily basis.
At that moment, I felt I was the luckiest gal on Earth.

PREDICTING A RELATIVELY BLEAK FUTURE FOR THE ENTIRE HARBOR AREA ONCE MONEY SHIFTS FROM THIS LOCALE TO PROVIDE GANG REDUCTION TO A DOZEN OTHER REGIONS CONSIDERED MORE CRITICAL;
IT’S TIME TO REALLY WORRY ABOUT OUR KIDS AND FOR THE COMMUNITY TO STEP UP WHETHER THAT BE VIA DONATIONS, VOLUNTEERING OR FINDING OTHER OUT-OF-THE -BOX SOLUTIONS

By Diana L. Chapman

The bit of luck that existed in the Harbor Area when it came to ugliness of gangs will soon be erased with our mayor’s latest and greatest plan – which is way too late and not that great.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa believes that if he transfers funds currently for gang prevention that exist here and other areas of the city –and filters it to twelve more distinct gangster-ridden neighborhoods with higher crime stats, he will be doing something really different that will work. He plans to hire 1,000 more officers, I guess to stomp the gangs out in those neighborhoods.
Well it’s not that different and it’s unlikely it will work.
First, I wish the mayor had to face Harbor Area victims and tell them that our area didn’t provide enough statistics to keep the money here. I’d like him to face:
a) My girlfriend who stumbled on her way home during rush hour in San Pedro into the brazen shooting in broad daylight of a 15-year-old on his front porch. My friend was desperately trying to reach his younger sister to get her out of the line of fire. While I can’t name my friend, I know one thing; she has not been the same since and makes sure she’s out of San Pedro before dark.
b) LaTerian Tasby, 17, a prominent football and basketball player, who died trying to protect his friends at an athlete’s party last October when gangsters crashed the party, carrying knives and guns and shouting racial slurs. They shot LaTerian in the chest. After all, the kid was an easy target, 6’ 7” inches, and someone who would fight to save his friends and who knows.
c) Cheryl Green, the 14-year-old gunned down in Harbor Gateway because she was black.
d) The six-year-old who was shot in the head in his parent’s van, when gang signs allegedly were flashed on both sides. Who cares who was in the gangs – all I care about is a six-year-old does not ever deserve to be shot.

What would the mayor say to these people? Sorry, the media just blew your story up so much – the neighborhood got a lot of hype it didn’t deserve. And how about it mayor? You sure were prancing around the cameras when Cheryl Green was killed during the big media blitz.

Our kids are dying in the streets – everywhere in this city – so why would you take away from one area to allegedly fix another. Historically, every time the police zero in on a region with a driving force to batter down gangs, the gangsters do one thing – they leave and move to areas left wide open..This is exactly what happened when the LAPD broke up Nickerson Gardens – and in fact – exactly what happened with the mafia in Sicily when the government cracked down in the late 1800s. Many mafia members upped and move to the U.S. Why not? It was a wide open territory.

Where an area has less police to mind the store and less programs to mind the kids, we become – like La Terian Tasby -- a giant to target.
I shake to think what will happen if the Toberman House loses so much funding they quit sending former gang members out in the streets to sooth the hostilities and prevent more gang killings.

Or what the Boys and Girls club will do when it’s budget plummets by up to $200,000. The club has discouraged kids from joining gangs with after school programs-- including encouraging kids who never thought they could go to college in a million years – do exactly that -- go to college.

In fact, more than 127 Boys and Girls club seniors have been accepted to colleges and are headed there this fall, with even more waiting in the wings for their acceptances.

But I fear all this will be swept away when the money gets sent to areas such as Watts, Hyde Park and Panorama City. Not that those areas don’t deserve the money, but what many local officials believe is that without the money here – gang crimes are only going to get worse.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who serves the Harbor Area, said she’s puzzled why more money isn’t used on diversions – primarily after school programs which time and time again are shown in studies to prove to be the best way to keep kids from gangs.

She's planning to put forward a multi-million intiative to the voters to establishes scores of after school programs throughout Los Angeles.

“We have to out recruit the gang members,” Janice said. “They are good at recruiting. They are there before school, during school and after school. It’s not rocket science. We’ve just given up and we have left our kids completely vulnerable to gang members.”

I too am a huge advocate of promoting after school programs – something I’ve worked on at Dana Middle School the last few years to keep the kids off the streets, out of gangs, far from drugs and to help them find their interests.

Meeting with some success, about ten of us were allowed to show the mayor’s staff
Dana’s pilot program. The model could be done anywhere, as it draws from a variety of sources, including police, parents, businesses, community members and nearby community organizations.

The mayor’s staff let us in the door and -- at the time -- offered for us to come back. But that door, no matter how many calls or emails, was not reopened. The Dana program only keeps scores of kids off the streets and helps them reprogram that – yes – they are worthwhile! They are smart! They are talented! They can bring their grades up!

Kids can change on a dime given the right set of circumstances unlike the parents that the mayor’s office told me need to be reached and changed first. Well, good luck changing the heroine addicted parents, the gangster parents, the single mom with six kids to feed who is just trying to keep everyone alive. It's not realistic. It's tough to teach an old dog new tricks.

But a young dog – that’s another story.

I’d rather pour all my efforts into the youngsters – who no matter what you say – still have a chance to make it if the right person, right program, right college bound effort, right talent is dropped into their lives.

I’ve witnessed it myself many times. A girl who wrote that she lived like “Cinderella,” raised her brother and sister, and lived a routine of social workers and police storming her house – was recently interviewed by both Pepperdine and Harvard. Shortly, she will be off to a UC school with future plans to become a judge. That happened – and only happened – because one of these programs captured her heart. In this case, it was the College Bound program.

Or how about Dana’s basketball coach, who runs a club where no kid can be turned away. Derrick Smith not only teaches the intense discipline of the sport – but watches over their grades.
“I’ve learned so much about basketball,” wrote one 13-year-old boy. “Coach has taught us we could become anything that we want to be. He also taught us to reach for the sky. It also keeps kids off the streets who might be doing bad things if they didn’t have this basketball club. I respect the coach as an idol and a father figure.”

We need parents to volunteer. We need more coaches who can look past the athlete and into the heart of a kid. We need community leaders to step up and help shore up after school activities – in particular at middle schools where kids still have a much bigger chance to change.

And we need the mayor to realize the damage he's about to do for our area.

If the rest of us don't pick up after the cuts, it makes it just that much easier for gangs to pick our kids off the tree as easily as a piece of fruit ready to fall.

In essence, the mayor hasn't done the Harbor Area kids a single favor -- but when we have another killing with a lot of hype, I suspect the mayor will be back, smiling that wide grin for the cameras.

In what appeared as a miraculous buy-in package to build a school at Angel’s Gate, Los Angeles school officials this week turned criticisms into advantages for residents to continue the progress toward building an 800-seat campus at the site.

Linda del Cueto, the superintendent for region district 8 which includes all of San Pedro and areas stretching up north to Watts, promised a list of benefits that might encourage even critics to turn their heads around and consider the site. She added the school likely will be for 9th and 10th graders only.

The final decision making, however, is left for Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Richard Brewer, Jr.

The proposed promises included:
Every student attending the school must live in San Pedro A magnet school will not be built at the site The proposed school would not be a satellite to San Pedro High, but exist as its own entity and run as its own school.

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Families of murder victims in San Pedro are asked to call in and share their stories if they would like their loved one honored at an upcoming peace vigil against violence this coming May.
Volunteers are also being sought for the May 15 event that will be held at 6 p.m. at San Pedro High School’s Pirate Stadium.
The vigil was sparked by the public outcry of the October shooting death of a popular San Pedro High football and basketball player, 17-year-old LaTerian Tasby, who was killed at a party filled with local athletes. Gang members allegedly crashed the event and prompted a brawl. Several other youths were stabbed, but survived. LaTerian was shot in the chest.
The San Pedro Safety Collaborative -- a group of law enforcement, school and service organization officials – have been studying a variety of ways to make San Pedro safer. After LaTerian was killed, the group agreed the entire community should step forward in a united stance against violence -- not just for LaTerian, but for all victims in the community who've been murdered.
Over the past two decades, 189 residents – including 24 children – have fallen to violence, averaging out to about nine deaths a year in the seaside community. However, few vigils have ever been held in any of these deaths.
Some of the murders were triggered by gangs; Many remain unsolved.
Joe Buscaino, a senior lead police officer for LAPD, said officers are tired of telling family members that they have just lost a loved one and watch the intense suffering and pain in the aftermath. The officer was born and raised here, and remembers several of the residents who were killed as people he grew up with or knew at school.
Besides family members who would like to honor their loved one, volunteers are also needed to help with the event, which will include guest speakers, students reading off 189 names of those who have died, and a ceremony where those attending will be asked to light up their cell phones to honor those who have been lost.
Residents who would like to honor their lost loved ones during the vigil should call, Gabriela Medina, and those interested in volunteering should call Alice Castellanos or Jennifer Gonzalez. All three work at the YWCA. The number is 310-547-0831.
If you need to reach the writer, email Diana at hartchap@cox.net