COLUMN ONE : Fighting to Keep a City’s Soul : Paramount’s pioneering efforts to forestall gang warfare failed to prevent the slayings of three young innocents this year. Many in the L.A. suburb despair that there is no defense against the violence.

At a time when cities across Los Angeles County were losing the battle to gangs, sometimes overwhelmed before they even realized they were at war, Paramount fought back.

In 1982, this tiny, blue-collar suburb pioneered the gang-prevention movement, developing a course for grade-school youngsters that has been cited by the district attorney’s office as one of the nation’s most admired and imitated programs for steering children away from the streets.

Over the years that followed, Paramount continued its efforts to forestall the ravages of gangs and boost civic pride, creating parks, a boxing program for youths, graffiti-removal teams and nearly two dozen colorful outdoor sculptures--culminating in an All-America City award coveted by the town’s image-conscious officials.

But by the end of 1992, fear, frustration and sorrow had overtaken Paramount’s hopes.

Between June and December, suspected gang members killed three current or former students of the city’s only high school: Alfred Clark, 17, a star athlete, shot the day before graduation after refusing to surrender his compact disc player at a McDonald’s near campus; Sheila Lorta, 16, a popular cheerleader on a break from practice, struck by an errant bullet, and Maritza Bonilla, 21, an aspiring hair stylist, fatally wounded at her sister’s birthday party in a drive-by shooting that injured nine others.

“I had to be hospitalized because I was in shock--I was so sick and upset that day,” said Rosa Tistoj, a Paramount resident for 18 years, who initially feared that it had been her teen-age daughter, not Lorta, shot in front of the school. “I pray every single day now that my kids are safe.”

During last spring’s riots, Paramount managed to hold back the tide of destruction by erecting barriers across freeway overpasses that connect the city with Compton. But, as Paramount’s residents have since learned, no matter what innovative programs or illusory walls are created to fortify a community’s borders, there is no sure defense against the recklessness of gang warfare.

The city’s despair is not just over the slayings of three promising young adults, or the proximity of such mayhem to a school that some have derisively dubbed “Shoot-’Em-Up High.” It is because a piece of the town has also died--a casualty of the sweeping social, economic and demographic forces reshaping cities across Southern California.

“I feel kind of a mourning,” said retired school board veteran and local historian Ethel Hillyard, who moved to Paramount 40 years ago. “It was sort of a close community, where people looked out for each other and were interested in what the other person was doing. Now we have so many newcomers, there’s just not that closeness anymore.”

Although Paramount’s annual murder count still rarely exceeds single digits--it stands at eight for 1992--the streets reflect the complex tensions that have brought an explosion of gang violence to Los Angeles County.

Over the last decade, as families have migrated outward from the urban core, a labyrinthine tangle of alliances and rivalries has evolved, with entrenched gangs suddenly finding themselves in heated turf battles with newcomers hungry for a reputation. The worst of these conflicts have pitted longtime Chicano gangs against immigrant gangs from Mexico and Central America, many of which have little appreciation for the rules of conduct forged by their rivals over the last half-century.

In Paramount, where 50,000 people live 16 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, there are three principal Latino gangs, two of them multi-generational and one made up of youths from more recently immigrated families. A small Crips clique has taken root and a handful of graffiti tagger groups have begun to adopt more gang-like traits. Altogether, membership is believed to total about 1,000.

“When I was growing up, there were gangs, but we knew who they were and they knew who we were,” said City Councilman Manuel Guillen, a member of Paramount High School’s first graduating class in 1954. “If there was a problem, a neighbor could scold you or whip you or tell your parents. . . . Now, we don’t even know the people living here.”

If any neighborhood typifies the challenges facing Paramount, it is the small maze of streets along the western edge of town known as The Sans.

When the city incorporated in 1957, an address on San Juan, San Vicente, San Luis or any of the 11 streets with saintly names that dead end at the Los Angeles River was considered living among the elite. The community was 96% Anglo and had the largest concentration of affluent, college-educated families.

Today, there is still an idyllic ambience amid the tall palms, fruit trees and neatly manicured rose gardens, but in recent years the neighborhood has been hard hit by gangs, drugs and late-night gunfire. Home to about 1,500 mostly Latino families, more than half of whom earn less than $30,000 a year, the community has Paramount’s largest number of high school dropouts.

“Oh, heck, it was a beautiful neighborhood,” said Enedino Tapia, a retired construction worker who moved there from Fresno in 1969. “But it’s changed like crazy. Now it’s a hell of a problem.”

During a short break from waxing his truck the other day, Tapia rattled off the precautions he has been forced to take: First, after years of enjoying the luxury of leaving his doors open, he decided to install double locks. Then came the bars on the windows. Now, he said, lowering his voice to a slightly conspiratorial whisper, he keeps a gun under the dash whenever he leaves home.

“I have to have something to defend myself,” Tapia said. “I’m not going to let those goddamned guys take advantage of me.”

Just down the street, past houses elaborately festooned for the holidays with colored lights, tin foil and smiling Santas, 18-year-old Angel Covarrubias is also waxing his car--only he is joined by his homeboys, sporting tattoos, oversize slacks and backward ball caps.

Covarrubias is part of Paramount’s changing face, a member of Compton Varrio Segundo--literally, the second Compton barrio.

For years, Paramount’s main gang was located across town, in the city’s traditional barrio, known as Dog Patch. Youngsters there can point to fathers and even grandfathers who came up through its ranks. But Covarrubias’ gang, a group of youths with mostly Mexican-born parents, has gradually drifted east from Compton, taking root in The Sans a little more than a decade ago.

Their emergence not only has challenged the preeminence of Paramount’s more established gangs, adding rivalries within the city’s borders; it has also brought violence into Paramount from Compton Varrio’s rivalries in other cities, such as Compton, Norwalk and Long Beach.

“Everybody just tries to be crazier,” said Covarrubias, who recently recovered from being shot three times in the back by rivals. “To win points, to get respect, they act like they don’t give a damn.”

While he talked, an elderly woman came walking down the sidewalk, which was blocked by a bicycle left by Covarrubias’ friends. She asked them to move it. But the gang members, not wanting to lose their cool by appearing too accommodating, shined her on.

“Well, piss on you,” said the woman, as she walked around.

All this brings shock and sadness to the many old-timers who recall the days when headline-making crime meant the theft of 26 jars of preserved fruit from a policeman’s home.

Settled by a wave of Dutch and Portuguese immigrants after World War I, Paramount grew into a bustling agricultural center, where it was often said that “there was enough hay to build the Washington Monument and enough milk to float the Navy’s largest battleship,” according to Ethel Hillyard’s “The Story of Paramount.”

The town’s central attraction, apart from the annual Hay and Dairy Fiesta, was the Iceland Skating Rink--the largest in Southern California when it opened in 1940. Its owner, the late Frank Zamboni, invented the Zamboni ice resurfacing machine--still manufactured in town--and his rink was used by former Olympic skating champion Sonja Henie to rehearse her ice revues.

In the 1960s, however, the dairies began to give way to housing subdivisions. Industry left. So did many longtime Anglo residents, who were rapidly replaced by working-class Latino families--now about 60% of the population. The city was shamed in 1982 when a RAND Corp. report based on socioeconomic data put Paramount on a list of 14 U.S. suburbs that the think tank described as “disaster areas.”

“That basically became the trigger, the focal point for change,” said Deputy City Manager Pat West. “The city started becoming very progressive and proactive.”

Paramount fired back with an ambitious redevelopment plan that helped spruce up the once-decayed downtown corridor with tidy shopping strips and a new Vons. The revenue it generated paid for millions of dollars in public parks and landscaping, thanks to a special exemption approved by the state Assembly that makes Paramount the only California city with authorization to spend redevelopment funds outside of redevelopment areas.

Despite criticism from neighboring cities, officials also changed the name of a two-mile stretch of Compton Boulevard to Somerset Boulevard after housing developers advised that it would lure more middle-income residents.

Finally, Paramount began to address a growing crime problem by creating the Alternatives to Gang Membership course--a farsighted move that predated the current trend toward prevention among many law enforcement and community-based agencies.

In 10 years, more than 9,000 youngsters have sat through the 15-hour barrage of videos, posters and stern advice that officials say has helped keep 98% of its graduates away from gang life. The program, originally taught to fifth-graders, has been added to the second- and seventh-grade curriculums. The number of instructors has grown from one to four, and the $217,000 budget includes funds for a boxing program.

But as Paramount has grown and the county’s gang scene has expanded, the limitations of the course have also become increasingly evident.

Because of a transitory population, as many as 30% to 40% of the city’s high school students never took the class in grade school. With the mayhem that some gangs seem bent on wreaking, even the most effective prevention program would be hard-pressed to head off the capricious violence that has rattled the city over the last year.

“Nowadays, there are no guarantees,” conceded Tony Ostos, creator and head instructor of the program. “Paramount is not an island. It’s not one of those enclosed cities surrounded by walls.”

Even today, city officials have responded to the three shootings by trying to reinforce the framework of their 4.8-square-mile community--budgeting more than $750,000 for landscape improvements around the schools, a median strip with wrought-iron fence in front of Paramount High, a full-time sheriff’s deputy on campus and chain-link fencing at the borders of the adjacent mini-mall that houses McDonald’s.

There is also talk of expanding the prevention program to include counseling for youths already in gangs. In January, civic leaders and law enforcement authorities will host a public forum on the topic. Just before Christmas break, a survey was sent to all high school students, asking for their suggestions.

“We can’t ever accept the fact that it’s hopeless,” said Michele Lawrence, superintendent of the 14,000-student Paramount Unified School District. “We must continue to rage against the night.”

But out on the streets, where residents wonder what it will take to protect their children, a grim reality has already set in. It is a recognition that the city will never be the same again, that even a town that fights the good fight is ultimately powerless to control the behavior of people who have nothing else to lose.

There are no guarantees against two out-of-town kids--allegedly members of a Lynwood gang--coming into McDonald’s and shooting Alfred Clark. No matter what precautions are taken, it would have been difficult to protect Sheila Lorta from the stray bullet fired at rivals by a bike-riding gang member. How do you defend against gunmen, bent on shooting up a party where gang members were present, apparently heading down the wrong street and opening fire on Maritza Bonilla’s house instead?

“It seems like there’s no safe place anymore,” said Josefina Ibarra, who operates the Centro Botanico on Paramount Boulevard, where she sells baby Jesus dolls, herbal medicines and mystical oil potions such as “Holy Death” and “Come to Me.”

“Nobody has the fear of God.”

Slaying Victims

The slayings this year of three Paramount young people by suspected gang members brought a sense of despair to a city known for its gang-prevention programs.