Fire Adds to Misery of Slain Child’s Family : Tragedy: Blaze damages mementos of a 7-year-old killed in a drive-by shooting.

The Hotel Antonio, a seamy, down-on-your-luck rooming house in Boyle Heights, was Angela Contreras’ safety net.

It was not the best place to raise her four children, Contreras conceded. But with her apartment in Echo Park condemned and her 13-year-old daughter pregnant, the $440-a-month bachelor unit was about as far as her welfare check could stretch.

Early this month, three weeks after Contreras moved in, her 7-year-old son, Arnulfo, was killed out front in a drive-by shooting. She vowed to have the other children out by New Year’s.

Then on Monday night a smoldering cigarette in a second-floor apartment sent flames racing through the aging two-story structure, severely damaging about half of the 52 units and displacing more than 100 tenants.

“Bad luck, I guess,” Contreras said with a weary shrug Tuesday. “I wasn’t going to stay anyway, but to have this happen . . . ?”

Most of her important possessions--the photos of her slain son, a painting of Jesus in an oval frame, all of her other children’s clothing--were left waterlogged or smoke-damaged. Contreras said she hoped to stay with friends for a few days, or until her next government check arrives.

But mostly her thoughts wandered to Mexico, the country of her grandparents, where she envisions a better life.

“It used to be that you could live better here,” Contreras, 37, said as she watched fire investigators comb through the charred building in the 200 block of North Soto Street. “But it’s not like it was in the old days. This new generation has taken over.”

Her sister-in-law, Cindy Avila, standing nearby against a graffiti-scarred wall, said: “Over there, they’re more civilized. You don’t have to worry about drive-bys. They live by the old rules. They respect each other.”

“Over here,” Contreras said, shaking her head, “there’s no respect.”

Contreras, born at nearby General Hospital and raised in East Los Angeles, had turned to the Hotel Antonio before. She lived in the 1920s-era building for a brief time in 1978 and in 1982, recalling it as a “just family” place. When circumstances forced her back to the hotel this year, gangs and drugs seemed far more deeply rooted.

“I didn’t know it was like this now,” Contreras said.

But it didn’t seem as if she had any alternative. Her husband had gone to Mexico, summoned after one of his daughters was hit by a car and seriously injured. Her own daughter, though just 13, was pregnant with her second child. Most apartments wanted first- and last-month’s rent, a security deposit, a key deposit, or some other requirement that seemed beyond the reach of the $483 check she receives from the county every two weeks.

The management at the Hotel Antonio--its name spelled out in red block letters on the beige stucco facade--was not so picky. For $220, she moved in, along with the four children and two grandchildren, all sharing a cramped room with a refrigerator, sink and mattress.

“It was my emergency place,” she said.

The first blow came Oct. 3 as Arnulfo, her youngest son, played with friends on a grassy strip along the parking lot of the McDonald’s restaurant next door.

A car passed, its occupants flashing gang signs at two young men standing nearby. Then a young woman stuck her arm out a passenger’s window and fired several shots from a handgun, striking the second-grader once in the chest. A 15-year-old girl, whose name has not been released because of her age, later surrendered to police. She has been charged with murder and is being held without bail at Juvenile Hall.

Contreras, distraught over her son’s death, swore she would move her children to a safer place. She wanted to wait until after Christmas, however, so she could afford to buy them presents.

On Monday, shortly after 6:30 p.m., black smoke began billowing from one of the second-floor units. Los Angeles fire officials, who knocked down the blaze in about 35 minutes, have put the blame on a careless smoker. Damage to the structure was estimated at $500,000. Damage to property inside was estimated at $50,000.

Twenty-seven tenants checked into a shelter set up by the Red Cross at Roosevelt High School. Contreras, meanwhile, spent the day waiting to get back inside her soggy apartment, hoping to salvage what is left of her life.